


Satellite Hearts

by Maayacola



Category: Johnny's Entertainment, KAT-TUN (Band)
Genre: Depression, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-08
Updated: 2012-12-08
Packaged: 2017-11-20 14:45:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 47,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/586518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maayacola/pseuds/Maayacola
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To Kame, their story is one told in postcards, in distances, and in words that linger unsaid between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Satellite Hearts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neverloveawildone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverloveawildone/gifts).



> The timelines might be a bit confusing. There are three, and they all move chronologically forward. <3

“Interview with Kamenashi Kazuya, April 17, 2023,” the interviewer, Kita Hiroshi, says into the camera, and the cameraman nods. “Marking the footage,” he says to Kame conspiratorially, like Kame hasn’t done thousands of interviews before. Like Kame hasn’t been a celebrity since he was fresh out of primary school. 

“Right,” Kame says with a straight face, because Kame hasn’t made it so far in show business by being rude to well-meaning people just trying to make him feel at ease. Kame’s an expert at this game. He leans back in the chair and spreads his legs a little, mimicking the stance of the man across from him. He’d read it in a girls’ magazine once, when he was a teenager- that some kinds of imitation made people feel more relaxed. 

It was listed under flirting tips, but Kame’s found over the years that giving an interview is a lot like flirting; letting reporters tease the answers out of you with small smiles and positive signals, giving just enough information to wet the throat, not quench the thirst. That’s how everyone leaves happy at the end of it, reporters like cats whose tongues are slick with forbidden cream and Kame with the vestiges of his private life kept carefully concealed.

Kame is nothing if not the consummate professional. 

Kita _does_ immediately calm down when he looks at Kame, and Kame keeps the grin off of his face by replacing it with a placid quirk of the lips. “Would you like some water?” Kita asks, and Kame shakes his head in the negative. His hair tickles at his neck, and brushes along his jaw where the collar of his dress shirt catches it and keeps it from falling straight to his shoulders. He’s wearing it long now, like he hasn’t since 2011. It’s for a movie role, and he’d forgotten just how much work it is to keep it out of his face. 

“No, I’m fine, thank you,” Kame replies, wetting his lips with his tongue instead. The chair he’s in is comfortable. Kame almost wants to sink back into it and let the plush material mold to the shape of his curved back. But his suit will wrinkle if he does that. Kame would feel uncomfortable, then, and it would be… The suit is expensive, and the fabric is a sort of silk hybrid that’s monstrously expensive to get dry-cleaned. It’s worth it because it shows off his broad shoulders, and sometimes Kame wants to feel decadent and lush. Kame sometimes likes to wear expensive, tailored things that no one else will wear. It’s fun, and exciting, and it gives him an edge. He likes the image he’s created for himself.

“Well, first things first,” Kita says, and Kame immediately focuses his eyes on the other man, taking in the interviewers earnest gaze. Kame likes him. Kame likes almost everyone, really, but he likes people with earnest faces the most. It’s hard to impress Kame with beautiful faces anymore, after years of working with Japan’s top actors and idols, but he still values someone who can look out at the world with no ulterior motives and a sense of optimism. Kame would like to think he was once like that, but he’s older now. Too much has shifted beneath him to expect the best—practicality serves him far better than optimism these days. “Congratulations on your new film. It’s doing very well in the box office.”

“Thank you,” Kame says, and a little prickle of satisfaction tingles in his chest. “I’m very proud of it. Everyone on the team worked very hard.”

“It shows,” Kita says. Kame’s fingers start to tap mindlessly on the arm of the chair. It’s hard to put himself back into the mindset he was in for that film—he’s on a new project now, one where he’s dyed his hair black and wears thick eyeliner and walks around with a split lip playing a has-been rocker picking fights in bars. 

“Again, thank you,” Kame says, and there it is—he can remember now, the way the stuffy salary-man suit had felt, too tight around his neck, and that tie he’d never have chosen in a million years because it was so boring. “It’s a project very close to our hearts.” He’d liked the cast, and he’d liked the script. 

“It must have been hard to play a character so ordinary,” Kita says, and Kita leans forward a little, like he’s trying to get closer to Kame. Kame smiles, and invites him. “When you’re so, well, extraordinary.”

“Not really,” Kame murmurs humbly. Kame doesn’t really think of himself as anything but normal. Sometimes he wonders how he got this lucky, to be recruited for a job he hadn’t known would be perfect for him at such a young age. 

“So it’s been a long time since you’ve consented to an interview. What made you decide to now?” Kita takes a sip of his water, and then folds his hands together, like he’s ready to get down to business. Kame takes note. There are bound to be meatier questions, now that the pleasantries are done.

“Because I love KAT-TUN. This anniversary project, the fact that people want to remember us… Well, that’s really wonderful and amazing to me. I feel honored.” Kame runs a hand through his hair. It feels soft between his fingers. It’s comforting. And maybe Kame is a bit nervous, after all. 

He’s given up the idol lifestyle, filled with countless interviews and variety show appearances. He’s enjoyed the solitude more than he thought he would. He’s enjoyed speaking his mind, and spending Christmas with his family, and going home at normal hours and sleeping all night. 

He’s enjoyed not talking about things that make him feel like he’s bleeding inside.

“So it’s been two years since KAT-TUN decided to end their musical career,” Kita says, after a moment’s pause. 

“Yes,” Kame says, straightening his back and meeting Kita’s gaze evenly. “I think we were all a little tired. It was a group decision. We didn’t make it lightly.”

It had been a long month of discussion. A long month of nostalgia fighting with common sense, and ambition battling reality.

“And you went on to focus on acting. It seems to suit you, Kamenashi.”

“Thank you. I sleep a lot more.”

“A lot more time in saunas?” Kita says, and he raises an eyebrow, and it startles a laugh out of Kame, the same way it always does when things he said years ago pop up to haunt him. 

“Yes. And a lot more time with my family. My nieces and nephews.” Kame’s oldest niece goes to college now, has too many boyfriends, and carries a bubblegum pink mobile phone with thirty charms hanging from it. She wears skirts that are too short and is embarrassed to go out shopping with Kame because they always get recognized. She doesn’t play hula hoop or hide and seek with him anymore.

Still, sometimes she comes over unannounced with snacks from the convenience store and makes Kame watch rom-coms with her. 

Kame wonders if it’s because she thinks he’s lonely.

Kame’s nephew likes baseball, at least, and Kame _isn’t_ lonely, and even though he sometimes wishes he had his own family, it’s not in the cards right now. What he has is enough.

“You have a big family.” 

“I do. We’re very close.” Kame smiles, and thinks of family picnics, and how sometimes Koki comes and crashes them, bringing obnoxious toys and shamelessly hitting on all of Kame’s sister-in-laws. 

What he has is enough. 

“I believe it,” Kita says. “Are you still close to your old band mates?”

“Absolutely,” Kame replies. “We spent half our lives together. We’re all attached to each other. It’s hard not seeing everyone’s face everyday.” It is hard. They’d stuck together through the worst of it. KAT-TUN had saved Kame when Kame was sure he couldn’t be saved. They’d started as strangers, but they’ve become brothers. Kame marvels at the ways of the world

“You’ve all known each other for more than twenty years, right?” Kita asks, and he’s leaning so close to Kame now that their knees brush. Kame lets himself relax back into his chair now, just a little. This is enough. Kita is his now, for all intents and purposes. 

“More than that,” Kame says, and he thinks of first cigarettes and first girlfriends and first kisses and stilted handshakes and shared rooms, six boys smushed together in a room meant for two. He thinks of drastic haircuts, and the way they all laugh at Junno’s puns now. “More than that.”

Kita grins encouragingly, and looks dotingly at Kame. “So let’s talk about KAT-TUN.” 

“Let’s.” Kame shifts in his seat, and then crosses his legs at the ankle. It feels weird. And maybe it’s just been too long since Kame did an interview, because he’s hot, and he wants to loosen his tie and take off his jacket. Kame prefers his famous jeans and fitted t-shirts. “I love KAT-TUN. I just want to be very clear that we didn’t end because of any problems. We ended because it was time to end. I’m the youngest, and I was starting to feel, well, old. Pop music is a landscape for the young, you know?”

“You’re still young yourself,” Kita says chidingly, and Kame smiles disarmingly at the man, who’s probably also around Kame’s age. “Don’t be so harsh.”

“We didn’t want to hang on until we faded out of relevance. We wanted to go out at our peak.” Kame would like a cigarette. He feels ancient, sometimes, even though his face doesn’t have any more lines than it did ten years ago. Even though he’s barely past his mid-thirties, and that’s far from old. But he’s starting to feel the years in his mind if not in his body, and maybe that makes all the difference.

“With a massive dome tour,” Kita says, and Kame nods.

“Right. We all made that decision together.” 

“A strong group of five.”

“We are,” Kame says. “Good coworkers and good friends.” It _is_ hot in the room, Kame realizes, as his button-down sticks to his back a little. The cameraman, when Kame glances quickly to his right, is sweating. He’s right under the lights, too, and Kame feels a bit sorry for him. The quilted texture of Kame’s chair is digging into Kame’s thighs through the thin material of his pants. 

“Yes, the group seems very close-knit. That didn’t happen until later, though, am I correct?” Kita’s got that look in his eyes, and even if he’s nice, he’s a journalist for a reason. All journalists like the thrill of the chase. Kame’s a rabbit in Kita’s eyes, and Kita is closing in like a wolf on the things Kame doesn’t want to talk about.

“What do you mean?” Kame asks, even though he knows exactly to what Kita is referring. There’s a tightness that coils in Kame’s belly, a mixture of anger and despair.

“You weren’t known for your friendship in the early years of KAT-TUN.”

“No, I suppose we weren’t,” Kame says, and he’s got to remember even further back, then, to long, pregnant silences and hesitant looks and flinching withdraws of offered comfort.

“ …It seems like an almost taboo topic at this point, but it’s been seven years now since Akanishi Jin’s decision to leave the spotlight,” Kita says, and the bottom drops out of Kame’s stomach. He tells himself not to stiffen, not to let his face freeze up. He tells himself he knew this would come. He tells himself he can talk about it now. 

He tells himself all of these things, but it’s harder than it looks to _listen._

“Has it?” Kame asks faintly, and his nails, trimmed short and square and lacquered black, catch on the chair, digging into the upholstery. Kita notices, eyes flitting uncertainly from Kame’s hands to Kame’s still pleasantly smiling face, and he leans back a bit.

“Yes,” Kita says, and he clears his throat. “Yes, it has.”

“I don’t want to talk about Akanishi,” Kame says, and his voice cracks on the name, and that’s stupid, because Kame’d practiced saying it smoothly in the mirror that morning; had clenched his fists and said _Akanishi, Akanishi, Akanishi,_ to himself over and over again until it came out just like any other word. 

Kita looks like he regrets asking, but he can’t really go back now. Kame’s avoided interviews because of this, and they both know it, and it would be like an elephant in the room even if Kita pulls back the question.

“You know why people are interested, though, right? A celebrity at the top of his career just…disappearing.” Kita takes a giant gulp of water then, and there’s an apology in his eyes. “Do you know where he is?”

Kame doesn’t. 

“It’s been a long time since Akanishi Jin was a part of KAT-TUN,” Kame says, finally, just like he’s practiced. Like he’s been practicing for years, ever since that day in July when it became official. Ever since Jin had graduated and went on to pursue something so different Kame got whiplash. “KAT-TUN is more than ‘that band Akanishi left,’ no matter what his publicity team would have you believe.”

“You mean ‘would have had us believe’,” Kita says, and it burns. Kame’s surprised it burns. Kame’s had seven years to adjust and it stings like it’s been seven days. “He’s not really trying to make anyone believe anything, these days.”

It’s too hot in here. Kame’s button down is completely sticking to his back now, and he feels a bit of perspiration starting to build on his forehead. Kame wants that water now, because his throat is impossibly dry. 

“I don’t want to talk about Akanishi,” Kame says, and damned if his voice doesn’t crack again. Kame slumps back in his seat. “Not everything has to be about Jin.” Kame knows his voice sounds sharp, too sharp, and he doesn’t know why. He’s answered questions about Jin before. Blunt and calm and without a flicker of doubt. Only now it’s been years since he’s had to, and maybe Kame’s losing his edge, after all. And it’s too hot, under the lights and under Kita’s inquisitive stare, and Kame doesn’t want to talk about Jin. Kame doesn’t want to talk about things that make him remember the things he’s buried. 

Kame feels old.

The silence is deafening. Kame focuses on his own breathing. Kita is looking at him with an apology in his eyes. Kame looks back. 

“Alright,” Kita says. “We can-“

“I need a cigarette,” Kame interrupts, and he stands up. His pants are wrinkled. Kame feels like he’s choking. He pulls his jacket off and drapes it over the arm of the chair, and that’s better, at least, as the air hits his back. “Let’s take a break, shall we?” It’s not really a question. Kita knows it.

“Right, of course,” Kita says, and Kame walks out of the room. The hallway is poorly lit and dark, and the air is cool without the glare of the lights. Kame leans back against the wall and pulls himself back together. His hands shake as he pulls out a cigarette. He lights up, and the smoke is warm in his lungs. 

He doesn’t usually smoke in front of others. He doesn’t want his nieces and nephews to smoke. He doesn’t like smelling like smoke, either, or letting the scent of ash and tobacco sink into his expensive silks and knitwear and denim. 

Kame leans against that wall for five minutes, letting the cool surface chill his back, and he thinks about postcards and eternity and about how he’s not lonely, and how he’s not sad, and it makes it easier.

“Sorry,” he says, after he washes his hands in the bathroom, pushes his hair out of his face, and walks back into the room. He smiles at Kita, slow and warm, and Kita, despite himself, starts to mellow out again. Kame likes this part. He likes that he’s so good at it. It’s something he can do that other people can’t. “Are you ready to continue?” Kame’s own brand of idol magic.

“Yes,” Kita says, and he squirms in his seat a little, and just like that, Kame’s won him back over. “So, one of your band-mates is getting married, right?”

“Yes,” Kame says, and he puts a little extra twinkle in his eyes, just for kicks.

*

Kame has always believed that love is like the sun. It burns too hot, it burns too bright. Love will turn you blind if you stare it directly for too long, even from hundreds of thousands of miles down below, lying on your back and looking up at awe from the green, green Earth.

But the sun is warm, too. The flicker of the sun’s rays in the winter can sink down to Kame’s bones when the chill is harsh. The sun will lovingly caress his face and leave it sun-kissed; golden and dewy in the summer heat. Kame likes the way his skin pulls and tugs across broad shoulders and thick arms in a Tokyo July, and he likes the way he can feel the sun’s strength directly, fluttering across dips and valleys and hidden places and leaving it’s mark in dark spots and freckles; a lingering touch.

The sun gives a lonely asteroid something to revolve around, Kame knows. A focus amidst the chaos of the universe; one that keeps fragments of the universe from spinning off its axis and into the black oblivion of space.

The sun burns away at his skin, and at his sanity, and peels away the layers Kame’s wrapped around everything he will never be able to forget, leaving him red and blistered and trembling. And Kame is a satellite, forever revolving around that sun. Close and far. Fast and slow. But forever circling.

It’s funny, Kame thinks, that no matter how many times he burns, he’s always dragged right back, trapped in love’s gravity and inexorably pulled toward that heat.

The sun is too bright. The sun is too beautiful.

And Kame is a satellite, forever revolving around it.

*

Kame gets a postcard from Vietnam on the fourth of March. On the front of the postcard it just says `Can Tho` and the photo is of around forty boats with thatched roofs floating across brown-green water, with the people inside the vessels dressed in bright colored clothing of turquoise and red and orange and teal. The image is vivid and festive. Kame wonders if this is a depiction of some festival or holiday. Kame doesn’t know anything about Vietnam.

It’s got nothing written on the back of it, except Kame’s address, in English, scrawled in a familiar loopy handwriting that Kame knows better than his own. Where one usually writes a message is nothing but a simple five-petal flower, drawn in black gel ink, and shaded on one side to look three-dimensional. 

Kame exhales, and grabs the rest of his mail. He takes the stairs not the elevator. The rail is cold under his sliding hand. The paint peels underneath his palm, sticking to the lines of it. No one but Kame takes the stairs this high up, not when there’s a bellhop and fifteen floors and a hurried flow to every aspect of life in Tokyo. It’s slower to take the stairs. Kame likes the feeling that, when he reaches his front door, he’s worked for it.

Kame walks into his flat and slips off his shoes. He shuffles over to the large map on the wall of his living room. Nakamaru had given it to him two years ago, on his thirty-fifth birthday, for “keeping track,” and had looked at Kame with serious, no-nonsense eyes, and Kame had hung it up on the wall in his living room that same day, because sometimes he can’t bother to pretend. On the hall tiny table, the one that Kame uses to hold his formidable glasses collection, family photos, and the small knickknacks his mother put there _years_ ago and insists he keep around for decoration, there’s a small bowl of pushpins. Kame selects a brown one. Brown like the boats in the photo, and brown like the people and the water, too. Sun-touched. His finger traces along the map, thick paper smooth against his the tip of it as he searches.

Vietnam is small and difficult for Kame to find, even though he knows, vaguely, where it is. When he locates it, he jams the brown pushpin deep into the wall. He steps back to admire his work, and nods to himself. 

The card feels sturdy in his hands. Sometimes they come bent, or torn. Sometimes they come in perfect condition. Once, just once, Kame ripped one into pieces, and it had taken a half an hour to put it back together with clear Scotch tape and shaking wrists. 

Sometimes they don’t come at all. Or maybe it’s that they aren’t sent. It’s not like a promise. Kame can’t expect them on regular intervals, or predict when he’ll open his mailbox and find one there, sitting innocently atop his electric bill and a new issue of Popeye that’s got someone on the front that backdanced for KAT-TUN or NEWS when he was twelve. 

Sometimes Kame wishes they wouldn’t come. But that is… that’s kind of like wishing that gravity doesn’t hold him to earth, and that the press of two adolescent thighs in adjacent chairs, seeking reassurance under an unforgiving spotlight, meant less than it did. It’s like wishing he could rewrite the past, and Kame doesn’t want to do that, not really. Just like he doesn’t really want the postcards not to come. 

There are just moments, brief and aching, when Kame feels like he’s earned a small measure of melancholy.

Kame’s got a shoebox under his bed that holds nothing but these postcards. When he pulls it from under the box-spring, pushing aside high thread count sheets and silk blankets to grasp the cardboard container, he counts fourteen of them already there. This is the fifteenth postcard. 

Seven years is a long time to wonder. Seven years is a long time to hold your breath.

Kame exhales again, but it’s a waste of time, because the air is still trapped in his lungs.

 

*

 

“Hey,” Kame says into the receiver, and Uchi is chirpy on the other end of the line. “Just got out.”

“What took so long, Kame? Out of practice with the whole ‘interview’ thing?”

“I may or may not have had a minor freak out during the interview,” Kame says, and Uchi’s laugh is rich and warm. “But I somehow managed to pull it together in the end.”

“Somehow,” Uchi says sarcastically. “Even after all these years, Kamenashi Kazuya is still the expert. Did he ask you out after the interview?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kame says, and the tightness in his chest starts to unravel at Uchi’s gentle teasing. “I just put people at ease, is all. All part of the job.”

“You flirt shamelessly with your eyes,” Uchi tells him, and Kame’s fingers toy with the strap to his leather bag. “You didn’t use to be so smooth.” Kame holds the phone to his ear with his shoulder, and uses his other hand to root around for his car keys. He finds them easily in the zippered pocket where he always leaves them. Kame likes things organized, because it makes his life easier. “Are we still on for lunch?”

“I’m starving,” Kame says. “I half-expected this interview to turn into some strange attempt by management to feed me, but I forgot it was a big-kid interview and not a variety show. Maybe it _has_ been too long since I’ve done this.”

“Aww, Kame, thirty-seven and finally feeling all grown up?”

“Someone doesn’t want me to buy him lunch. Talking about my _age_ of all things.”

Kame presses the power-lock button and opens the door, slumping into his seat as Uchi keeps laughing. “Kame, I always want you to buy me lunch. How long to do you need me to wait before I pick you up?”

“Can you give me an hour?” Kame asks. “I need to shower and change.” Kame’s pulling of his tie now, and when the knot comes undone he throws it with his bag and his jacket in the passenger seat. He winces at the giant crease along the back of the jacket, but it can’t be helped now. He sighs, and after Uchi agrees, he hangs up. He drives home, at exactly the speed limit, signaling well before he plans to turn. 

Kame tries to follow all these types of rules.

But once inside his own flat, he’s allowed to let himself breathe, a little. He leaves his clothes on the floor, letting them make a trail to the shower. His expensive slacks are in a crumpled heap with his underwear at the door to the bathroom, and Kame can’t bring himself to care.

In the shower, Kame leans his head against the ceramic tile of the wall. It’s cool against his forehead, even if the water is so hot it’s boiling. 

Thinking about the interview leaves a bad taste in his mouth. Kame’s got a map in his living room and a box under his bed, and little reminders everywhere he goes, and work is supposed to be safe. Kame doesn’t give interviews anymore to ensure that.

But all of the guys had agreed, together, to each meet with Kita. Fuji television is doing some holiday special about KAT-TUN, one of the top selling Japanese boy groups of all time; something to fill airtime during the vacation, Kame is sure, and it had seemed weird to be the only one who turned it down, especially since it’s not like he’s retired from the spotlight, really. 

Kame’s just tired. The water feels nice on his back. Kame’s got a super-expensive showerhead he thinks is worth it’s weight in gold, and it’s massaging out the kinks in his muscles and distracting Kame’s thoughts; the ones that, thanks to one little interview, linger on a softly curled lip and a shared cigarette, and a hat pulled low over chocolate eyes.

Kame feels like himself again, after he’s dressed in a pair of worn-in jeans and an overpriced t-shirt. His hair is wet, so he’ll try to remember to jam a hat over his head, and find a big pair of glasses to cover his face.

Uchi’s punctual, knocking delicately on Kame’s door like he’s afraid he’ll pound the door down, and Kame laughs to himself as he undoes the locks. He opens the door to Uchi’s grinning face, half-obscured by sparkly sunglasses with little pink heart-shaped rhinestones along the temples. 

“I have a doorbell,” Kame says, and Uchi’s face takes on a sheepish expression.

“I always forget.”

“Don’t most people have doorbells?” Kame asks, as he reaches over to his shoe rack and pulls out a pair of worn black combat boots. One of the laces is frayed, and he should probably pick up a new set of them before one of them snaps. 

“Ryo-chan doesn’t,” Uchi says, and hooks his thumbs on his pockets. “He tore it out of the wall and said that the only people he wants coming to his place are the people who know where the spare key is already.” Uchi scratches at his stomach. “Everyone else is selling something or a stalker, apparently.”

“It must take so much effort to feign being that grumpy,” Kame says, and he double checks the knots before he stands up and reaches for his hat. It fits snugly over his ears, and he follows it up with his sunglasses.

“You look like Madonna in the eighties,” Uchi says, and Kame shoves at him, lightly, no real force in his arms. Kame might not play baseball every day anymore, but hours with his oldest nephew at the batting cages on the weekends keep his arms strong. “Or just…the nineteen-eighties. Personified.”

“We all do what we must to stay incognito,” Kame replies, and Uchi snorts. “Incognito and _vintage._ ”

“Yes, nothing screams incognito like a Yohji Yamamoto runway sweater and a massive skull ring on your thumb,” Uchi retorts, and Kame just lifts one perfectly manicured brow, eyes critically examining Uchi’s bedazzled eyewear, and Uchi shrugs. “Never said that _I_ was going for incognito. I don’t really have to.”

Uchi drives. Uchi always drives, because he thinks Kame drives like someone’s grandmother, and Kame takes the opportunity to close his eyes. “How are things going for Nakamaru’s wedding?”

“Hmmm?” Kame asks, and he blinks his eyes slowly, looking over at Uchi, who has a mildly worried frown on his face. 

“Aren’t you helping with Nakamaru’s wedding? You mentioned it in your email last week.”

“Right, yeah,” Kame says. “We’re figuring out the invitations next week? Possibly. Nakamaru doesn’t even know. Meisa probably isn’t letting him do anything. It’s like a KAT-TUN reunion, what with the documentary and the wedding. It’s strange.”

“Are you happy?” Uchi says. 

“It’s nice,” Kame answers, and he leans his head against the window, watching the scenery fly by. “We haven’t done a real project together in a couple of years.”

“Awww, I’m feeling all warm and fuzzy,” Uchi says. “When did you guys become a big bunch of saps?”

“We’re all getting old and nostalgic,” Kame jokes, and Uchi snorts again. 

“Now who’s talking about your age?”

“Nakamaru is finally getting married,” Kame says, and he looks at his nails. The black polish is chipped, but it’s supposed to be. Kame’s filming in the morning, so he doesn’t even bother to take it off. “That’s the last of us.” 

“That still leaves you, Kame,” Uchi says, and Kame pulls at his seatbelt, because it’s digging uncomfortably into his shoulder. “Don’t forget you haven’t settled down. When are you going to find a nice woman in her late fifties to dote on you and share your taste in ladies handbags?”

“I’m not looking,” Kame says with a laugh, and Uchi’s hands tap distractedly along the wheel. “So I don’t count. Not everyone has to follow a traditional route to happiness.” Kame wraps a piece of his hair around his index finger. “Also, a woman in her late fifties?”

“You always did like them older,” Uchi says. “Ahhh, I miss the days when you had scandals.”

“One scandal,” Kame says. “One. Cut me some slack, Hiroki.” Kame leans his head back against the leather and cuts his eyes at Uchi. “And if you bring up that cab driver incident I swear I’ll—“

“I wasn’t even thinking about it,” Uchi says, but the twitch of his lips betrays the lie, and Kame isn’t even phased by it anymore. It’s just another well-trodden joke he’s gotten used to over the years. “After all, that wasn’t a romantic scandal.” Uchi feigns shock. “Or was it? Did that cabbie see something he shouldn’t have? Maybe you and a stately gentleman in his sixties, making eyes at each other on the sidewalk—“

“Shut up,” Kame says, now laughing aloud. “You have to have _romance_ in your life to have romantic scandals.”

“Right,” Uchi says, and Kame can almost _see_ the tension shift through the car. Uchi’s mouth sinks into a frown, and they’ve traveled this ground before, Kame thinks. They’ve traveled it before, and Kame’s still raw from the interview- he doesn’t particularly want to travel it again. “Hey Kame, don’t you think…” He half-turns in his seat, like he needs to look at Kame to say what he wants to say. Kame’s just thankful they’re at a stoplight. 

“No,” Kame says, and Uchi sighs, settling back into his seat and staring out over the dash. The atmosphere in the car is suddenly unbearably heavy. It’s weird, Kame thinks, how even with his closest friends, there are so many things that remain taboo. It’s not that Kame doesn’t want to talk about it, it’s just that he can’t. He’s been trying for a long time and he still hasn’t wrapped his head around it. 

“Is it-“

“Hiro,” Kame says, and Uchi presses his lips together and quiets. It’s only awkward for a moment, and then Uchi’s pointing at a fashion atrocity out the driver’s side window and they’re both debating the pros and cons of legwarmers over jeans in only moderately cold spring weather, and Kame’s muscles relax one by one until it’s like no one ever mentioned anything out of the ordinary.

Uchi parks, and it’s a little ways walk to one of Kame’s favorite restaurants, this posh French restaurant where they serve sandwiches with ingredients Kame can’t even pronounce. But the taste can’t be beat—Kame loves the way the mustard is slightly sweet and the way no one blinks we he demands that there be absolutely no tomatoes.

“So,” Uchi says, after they’ve placed their orders. “You never really answered me. How did that interview go?”

Kame scratches at his wrist, nails catching on the silver bracelets that clink together, and Kame wonders if everything today will just keep circling back to this.

He wonders if today’s just one of those days where he has to rip the band-aid off. Problem is, when Kame does that, the wound stings for days, not seconds, and Kame’s not too fond of going to bed cloaked in memories and waking up drowning in melancholy.

“They asked about Jin,” Kame says, after he takes a sip of his water, and Uchi pauses, sandwich halfway to his lips. “I should have been expecting it. I _was_ expecting it. But it still…”

“A minor freak out,” Uchi says, and Kame nods.

“Don’t know why I’m not numb to it yet,” Kame says bitterly. “It’s not like he’s ever going to, you know, come back.” _To me_.

“Kame, there’s still a chance…”

“No there isn’t,” Kame says. “Not really. There’s no reason for him to ever…”

“Yes there is,” Uchi replies, and catches Kame’s gaze. Uchi looks serious, eyebrows drawn together and fluffy hair falling into calm and intent eyes. “You, of all people, know that there’s a chance, Kame.”

“Because of some postcards?” Kame laughs, and it’s an empty sound. Kame’s a better actor than this. 

“No,” Uchi says. “Because of the freaky not-friends-best-friends thing that you guys had going on that I still don’t understand.” Uchi coughs. “I mean, Akanishi always said more to you.”

“Said? Not so sure about that.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do,” Kame says, and he languidly reaches for a fry, nibbling on it thoughtfully. “But one or two pictures a year is…”

“Did something happen…” Uchi starts to ask, but then he seems to think better of it, and stuffs the last bit of his sandwich into his mouth. “Pretend I didn’t ask,” he says around the bite.

“No,” Kame says. “No, nothing.” It’s almost true. Kame’s not the pining wife of a sailor lost at sea. Kame is more like a sailor with a wounded knee—he’s fine most days, but the joint aches when it’s going to rain, and sometimes it’s hard for him to walk. 

It’s just enough to remind Kame, in the winter, of warm fingers along his jaw, of the spill of hot ash-scented breath along his cheek as the wet snow’s chill seeped in through his boots and froze his toes. 

When that happens, Kame finds it hard to even stand, let alone walk.

So maybe there was something. Kame’s not sure. Kame’s always been good at understanding where he stands with everyone _except_ Jin. And even after twenty years, sometimes he thinks he’s further from figuring it out than ever. 

“Oh,” Uchi says, and then he picks up his water glass and chugs. 

 

*

 

Jin, Kame can see from the very beginning, loves to sing and dance. There’s a fire inside of him that burns a little fiercer when the music starts; he lights up brighter than the baseball diamond on the nights when Kame’s favorite team has to play an extra inning. Jin has a passion for what they do that drives him forward in ways that Kame doesn’t really understand, muscles clenched in effort and singing even when his voice has long gone raw.

Kame is different. Kame loves to entertain. Singing and dancing, for Kame, is a means to an end—he loves the roar of the crowd, the way they yell his name in shrill voices when he rolls his hips in a way that’s barely acceptable outside the bedroom, licking an adventurous tongue over chapped lips. Kame likes making other people happy, likes that a wink from him can make some teenage girl’s day, likes that he’s got all this influence. He likes that he’s good at it, too. Good at it like he was good at baseball. Kame didn’t want to be an idol at first; he was never a good-looking child, and he’s a little better than mediocre singer, and dancing is more fun when he can break the choreography and just move to the beat. It’s more about other people’s reactions than about what he actually does to get it.

But Jin loves the act. He loves the sheen of sweat, the beauty of a perfect muscle isolation, the echo of his own pure voice ringing loud and clear across a spellbound audience. Jin likes making up melodies in his head, and figuring out the song lyrics and singing them under his breath, long after the rest of the world has gone to sleep. Kame can see the unadulterated joy in Jin’s eyes when he has a rapt audience, eyes closed, just enjoying the soaring verses of something he’s made all alone. Jin wants to share his _art_ , not himself. 

Years later, over a lonely cup of espresso with no sugar added, Kame wonders if that makes all the difference. Kame wonders if it explains why Kame became a perfect idol, and Jin started showing all these cracks; fissures so large that Jin started fracturing into pieces.

Maybe it’s why that fire grew so dim.

 

*

“Hey, hello? Kame, are you here?” Sakamoto asks, and Kame, who is running his fingers aimlessly across the stitches on his glove, jerks out of his thoughts.

“What?” Kame asks, looking up sharply, eyes focusing in on the other man.

“You look like you’re lost somewhere else, right now. Not get enough sleep last night?” He winks. “If you want to hang out next week instead, that-“

“No, no,” Kame says. “Sorry. I do that sometimes. You know, thinking about my exciting sex life.”

Sakamoto laughs, loudly, at the sarcasm in Kame’s tone. “Oh yes, Kamenashi. The newspapers never stop going on about your sexual exploits, do they?”

“No, never,” Kame says. “Must be all my thrilling nights at the Lex or out soliciting prostitutes.”

Sakamoto grins at Kame’s playful smile. “You should fall in love,” Sakamoto says. “It would suit you.”

“So does acting, and hanging out with my friends,” Kame says. “And hanging out with you, too, I guess.”

“Fine, fine, avoid if it you want,” Sakamoto says. “But think about it.”

“I’ve dated,” Kame says, and remembers the way Anne was taller than him, and how her hand had still felt so small in his own. 

“Dating is not falling in love. Especially if you don’t really give the person you’re dating a fair shot.”

“You don’t just choose to fall in love,” Kame says, tossing the ball up and down in the glove. “It’s not that simple.”

“You can let yourself, though,” Sakamoto says, and hold his hand up, because he wants Kame to pass him the ball. Kame complies. “Play ball.”

 

*

 

_They name thee before me,_  
A knell to mine ear;  
A shudder comes o'er me—   
Why wert thou so dear?  
They know not I knew thee,  
Who knew thee too well:—   
Long, long shall I rue thee  
Too deeply to tell. 

\--When We Two Parted, Robert Browning

 

*

 

Making a drama together is more fun than it has any right to be. Jin’s hair is too long, and he’s got one blonde piece in it that Kame thinks is hilarious, and he can’t keep his hands off of it, constantly tugging at it. Jin doesn’t mind. Jin likes to be touched, at least by Kame, and Jin’s got a smile he saves for just the moment when it’ll take Kame’s breath away.

Kame wonders if Jin just knows, or if maybe that moment doesn’t really exist, and Jin’s smile creates it; Maybe Kame’s breath will always stop in his chest at Jin’s smile. 

“We need Hayato on set, Akanishi!” The director calls, and Jin disappears, disentangling himself from Kame. Kame is sure neither of them know how they’d gotten tangled in the first place. “Koike, you too!”

“Right!” Teppei calls, and he bounds over to Jin and shoves him, and Jin laughs, and the sound, clear and loud and joyous, makes it hard for Kame to turn away from him.

“You guys are really close, huh?” Nakama says, and her arms are crossed, her famous Yankumi track suit looking almost out place with Kame’s school uniform. 

“Yeah,” Kame says. “Jin’s my best friend.”

“That’s nice,” Nakama says, and there’s a weird glint in her eyes. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?”

“What are you talking about?” Kame asks, and Nakama looks surprised, and then chagrined. She ruffles Kame’s hair.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says. “It’s nothing.”

It’s not nothing, Kame knows, but Kame can play obtuse. It’s definitely not nothing. It’s those sly whispers from _senpai_ , or the way the girls scream their name together at shows like it’s one name. It’s the way a photo of Kame clinging to Jin’s hand looks up at him from a sold out magazine. It’s the way people write _faggots_ on message boards and Kame prays that Jin won’t see it. 

It’s something, and it makes nervousness churn in Kame’s gut, and he can ignore it and ignore it, but Kame knows one day, he’ll be too old to do that.

But then Jin screams at him, “Kame!” and it’s squeaky and high-pitched, and Kame just wets his lips and goes over to join him, toying with a silver band on his smallest finger and wondering if it’s going to rust.

Maybe this is love.

 

*

 

The first postcard comes on January third, 2016. It’s just got Kame’s address printed in sloppy kanji and hiragana. It makes Kame’s heart freeze in his chest. His hands pull it out of the mailbox. His fingers are shaking as he flips it in his palm.

It’s the Great Wall. `China`, it says along the bottom, in cursive English script. It takes Kame a minute to sound it out. He’s not used to speaking any English that’s not in one of KAT-TUN’s songs, and he hasn’t sung those in a while either. 

_Wish you were here,_ is written in hesitant looking Japanese in the message box, and Kame has to make himself breathe. He quickly grabs the rest of his mail and doesn’t let himself look again until late at night, after he’s tucked himself into bed and turned out all the lights. 

He walks in the dark to the kitchen, where the mail remains stacked on the counter, and turns on a single florescent light, lighting the tiny corner of the kitchen a dull orange. The postcard is still there. Kame’s been thinking, all day, that he’s imagined it, but it’s real, cardstock thick between his trembling fingers. He drags his fingers along Jin’s characters, trying to imagine Jin writing them. The ink is thick, like maybe Jin’s hands were shaking when he wrote it, and Kame licks his lips. 

China.

It’s the first clue in months; the only clue since Jin had disappeared without a word to anyone, only a note left in his parent’s mailbox that he was done and that he loved them, and his missing name from the Johnny’s web artist page.

Kame likes the picture. He likes the fading red and purple of the sunset, and the way the wall seems to go on forever into the distance. He bet Jin likes it. He can imagine Jin sitting there with a receipt from a laundromat or something, scribbling cheesy lyrics down on the back of it. 

Kame holds the postcard up to his cheek, and it’s like he can feel Jin’s warmth, like maybe a little of Jin has sunk into the paper and traveled here to Kame through the postal service. 

Kame wonders if Jin is happy now. Kame wonders if Jin’s found some kind of peace.

 

*

 

“Uncle Kazu, seriously?” Kota asks, and he’s only ten but Kame can see the beginnings of the Kamenashi stubborn streak in him already. “You need to be more careful!”

Kota’s dressed in casual clothes, having ditched his school uniform at his house, and he’s got a Tokyo Giants cap sitting on his head; one Kame’d given him months and months ago, and Koji had told Kame that Kota wore it to bed most nights. Saitoh had given it to him on a lark, saying he’d thought one of the many Kamenashi nephews might like it, and Kame’d immediately thought of Kota, the youngest boy in the family. 

“What do you mean?” Kame asks, adjusting Kota’s grip on the bat. “Hold it like this,” Kame instructs. 

“Your picture in the gossip newspaper again,” Kota says disgruntled, even as he leans happily back against Kame’s chest, as Kame’s arms wrap around him, adjusting his form. “It’s bad enough the kids tease me at school because their moms are all in love with you.”

Kota’s got this way of scrunching his brow that reminds Kame of Nakamaru, and it’s weird to see such a Maru expression on a Kamenashi face. 

“I didn’t mean to get caught,” Kame says with a laugh. “I was just having lunch with a friend.” He and Uchi’d never noticed the sly photographer, but Kame still thinks it’s because Uchi was wearing those rhinestone studded sunglasses.

“A boyfriend?” Kota asks, and Kame almost drops his arms. “It was a guy, right?”

“What?” Kame asks, and then he draws in a shaky breath. “No, Kota. Just a friend.”

“Don’t you want to get married?” Kota’s trousers, Kame notices, have a hole in the knee. Just a tiny one. He wonders if Kota’s mom has noticed yet. He’ll mention it when he walks Kota home from the batting range. “To a boy or a girl? My dad is worried about you.”

“Is he?” Kame asks, and then Kame runs a hand through his hair and pushes Kota’s cap down further on his head. “He doesn’t need to be.” Kame smiles, and Kota grins back. He’s missing a tooth, and Kame remembers the way it feels, to run your tongue over a gap. “Neither do you, kiddo. I’m happy. I’ve got an awesome family and an awesome job.”

“I know you’re happy,” Kota says. “It’s just you’ve got that map. And sometimes I wonder if you could be happier? Are those places you’ve visited?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Kame says, and pulls back from Kota, walking over to the coin machine. He rattles around in his pocket for hundred-yen coins, and when he finds a few, he pulls them out. “Ready to swing?” Kota nods, and Kame feeds the coins into the machine. He presses the start button. 

Kota hits the first ball, and shouts with joy, and Kame thinks today, the sunlight is warm enough.

 

*

 

Maybe Kame is on Earth. He likes to think he is, most days, going through every day with a smile that he genuinely means at least eighty percent of the time. He keeps his feet planted there, and tries not to float off into space.

The sun is one-hundred and forty-nine point six million kilometers from the sun. Sometimes Kame feels secure that that distance is far enough away that he’s safe, and that it’s okay that nothing’s worked out the way it should have. The rest of the time, well… It only takes light about eight minutes to travel across all that distance to shine down on them all, so maybe it isn’t as far as one would think.

And it only takes about a minute, the other days, for Kame to feel all the memories rush back after he hears Jin’s name. That’s how he knows he’s not on Earth.

On those days, Kame knows he is a satellite, orbiting the sun.

 

*

 

“I can’t do this anymore,” Jin says, arms behind his head as he stares up at the unremarkable ceiling. Kame is sitting across the room, legs crossed at the ankle, just watching. 

Jin’s t-shirt rides up his stomach, revealing soft belly where there used to be nothing but the slim beginnings of muscles and a silver navel ring. His voice is casual, like he’s talking about the weather, or maybe the results of a soccer match where he has no personal investment in either team. 

“Do what?” Kame asks, his voice hoarse. He and Yamashita have been constantly promoting _Nobuta wo Produce_ , and Kame feels run ragged; like he’s nothing but tatters now, bones in his wrist sharp and prominent, especially under the harsh lights in this mirrored room. He can see his veins. 

“This,” Jin says, with a fierce exhale. “Just…this.” Jin doesn’t turn to look at Kame, just sucks his lower lip into his mouth. He’s not wearing socks, and his toes flex back toward him. Jin looks like something between man and boy, with his worn-out sweatpants that are two sizes too large pooling on either side of him. He looks so young, but something in the set of his mouth looks far too old. There’s something in his eyes too. Kame doesn’t understand it, not really. Jin’s been fading away from him, from everyone, slowly but surely for a while now, and Kame doesn’t quite get why.

Jin used to smile rich and bright, but now, more often than not, he’s pulled inside himself so deep that Kame doesn’t have any idea what he’s thinking, or feeling. He doesn’t have any idea what Jin wants.

“The floor is dirty,” Kame says, because words don’t come easy, with Jin. “And your shirt is white.”

“So?” Jin says, and he rolls onto his stomach, resting his head on folded arms and facing Kame. There’s dirt across his back, just like Kame had known there would be, and Jin’s hair is matted, tangled from lying on it wet. “Who cares?”

“You care,” Kame says, because Jin’s the kind of guy who does his own hair and scratches at his scalp with a single finger so he doesn’t mess up the sculpture of it. Jin’s the kind of guy that always checks the clasps on his necklaces to make sure they’re in the back. “You’ve always cared.”

“Not right now,” Jin says. “I don’t care at all right now. Someone could take my picture just like this, and I don’t care.”

“You’re an idol,” Kame says, and he can hear it in his voice; the subtle, curling disapproval that snakes its way around his words of late, when he talks to Jin. Kame doesn’t mean to sound like that, but he’s frustrated. KAT-TUN is so close he can taste it. This, _Nobuta_ , is the last hurdle, he knows it is. After this. After this, they’ll get their chance. The way that Jin is slowly withdrawing… it’s not the time for that. Kame thinks that maybe Jin’s detachment makes him so angry because he can’t fix it.

Jin can hear it too; all the feelings that Kame can’t hold in. “I don’t know if I want to be,” Jin whispers, and his voice is muffled because his mouth is pressed to the flesh of his arm, but Kame makes out every word. Jin’s eyes are looking at him, looking into him, and Kame feels like crumbling. “An idol, I mean.”

“Oh,” Kame says, and his palms feel sweaty, and Kame’s hungry, and tired, and there’s nothing... Kame thinks about _Nobuta_ , about backhanded compliments and implied promises, about KAT-TUN finally debuting. Kame thinks about watching himself waste away into nothing just so they can all become something. Together. 

Kame closes his eyes, and its like there’s no air in the room, because his lungs feel tight, and there’s no consolation to be found in taking deeper breaths. 

“Kame,” Jin says, and Kame forces himself to look at Jin, whose eyes now regard the tiled floor like it holds the answer to whatever it is that Jin can’t find. “All I want is to sing. I can’t be perfect all the time. I’m not _you_ ,” and Jin’s always had this way of making his words sound like a caress, even if the words themselves are often actually far more like daggers. “I’m tired, Kame. Of this.”

“A little early to be getting tired,” Kame says. “You used to have a lot more optimism than this.”

“I used to be a lot of things,” Jin says. “I’m not quite sure who I am now.”

“You’re Jin,” Kame says, and his ring digs into his palm as he clenches his hands. His hair is too long in the back. It’s irritating him as it brushes along the collar of his shirt, a plaid thing that had been the closest in reach when he’d stumbled out of bed this morning, skin sticky with sleep and eyes still heavy. “You’ll always be Jin.”

“I know,” Jin says, and his words are hollow. “I still know what I want. But it’s almost funny. “ Jin sighs, and a dark strand of hair blows to the side. “Because it feels like everyone is trying to tell me to be something else. Something I don’t know if I can be.” The whimsical curve of that lock draws Kame’s attention. “I’m lost in the dark.”

Kame wants to crawl toward Jin, sit next to him on the dirty floor and feel Jin’s heavy, lazy limbs curl up around him, to feel the beat of Jin’s heart against Kame’s own protruding ribs, and to cling to the last vestiges of a Jin that had picked him up and dusted him off all those years ago. A Jin that had held Kame together.

Jin can’t even hold himself together now, and Kame’s too practical to live in yesterdays.

“You should figure it out soon,” Kame says, and his teeth feel fuzzy. He wonders if he’d forgotten to brush them this morning in the rush. “You’re running out of time.”

Jin laughs, and it’s a sharp and bitter sound. “I know,” Jin says. “I know that already.” Jin’s gaze flickers over, and catches Kame’s, stripping Kame bare with the hollowness in his eyes that contrasts with the wide, forced smile on his face. “Don’t worry, I’ll manage.”

“Don’t leave me,” Kame says in a rush, and he hates himself for letting that wobble into his voice, for showing the strain of a hundred sleepless nights and a thousand words unsaid.

It’s Jin who comes to Kame, pulling himself up from the floor and collapsing next to Kame in a soft languid heap, breath scented of mint hissing warm across Kame’s jaw. It’s Jin who bridges the three meters that sometimes feel like kilometers to tangle his fingers with Kame’s, and to press his bare feet to Kame’s calf that makes Kame feel both wide awake and like he could slip into slumber at any moment, wrapped up in Jin’s unusual embrace, dirty t-shirt pressed to Kame’s clean skin. 

_Kizuna_ , Kame thinks. This, _this_ , is what that word means. That word stands for everything between them, even now. It stands for Jin’s palm flush against his own, and a moment where they both pretend everything is okay, and that nothing’s changed, and draw comfort from each other that’s more powerful than Kame’s perfectionism and Jin’s slow fade into silence.

“You’re strong,” Jin says. “Stronger than me.”

“Am I strong enough to pull you back?” Kame asks, and he’s not sure what he’s asking: strong enough to pull Jin back to Kame, or strong enough to pull Jin back to Jin.

“I hope so,” Jin says, and he says it into the skin of Kame’s neck, like a prayer. “Otherwise I’m not sure where I’ll end up.”

 

**Part Two**

 

*

 

“Kame-chan!” Koki cheers when Kame walks in. He hops off the sofa, where he’s doing _something_ with envelopes, knocking several to the floor, and earns a beleaguered look from Nakamaru, who gathers the envelopes up again and returns them to the stack on the low table by the sofa. “Want a beer?”

“Sure,” Kame says agreeably, even though he’ll only drink about half because his alcohol tolerance is still shamefully low. “Where’s Masuda?” It’s strange that the best man isn’t here, but Kame’s sort of glad for a KAT-TUN-only afternoon. It’s not that they’re each other’s best friends, but there’s something wonderfully similar to _family_ about it. 

“Up to something gluttonous, I’m sure,” Ueda says, and Nakamaru talks over him with a grin. 

“He’s in charge of the kids today,” Nakamaru says. “Too busy for wedding duty.”

“What do you need me to do?” Kame asks, shedding his light jacket and fedora, leaving them both on the crowded coat rack. There are bizarre chains hanging there too, and Kame thinks about Koki’s lack of clanking on his way into the kitchen and smiles. Some things never change.

“We’re writing up invitations,” Nakamaru says. “It’s the only task Meisa trusts me with. She thinks everything else should be left completely up to her and her friends.”

“You are so lucky,” Koki says, and Kame hears the hiss of an opening bottle. Koki returns and hands Kame a beer. “Minako made me go along for everything. I wasn’t allowed to make any decisions, but I had to _be there_ while she made them.”

“Ditto,” Junno says, and he crosses his arms. “Except I was asked my opinion, and then Eri would pick the opposite of whatever I chose ‘because I was in a boyband, which means _obviously_ my taste is questionable’.”

“Really?” Ueda says, looking through typed lists. “I suppose it’s no surprise, considering that the rest of your relationship goes about exactly the same.”

“Haha,” Junno says. “As charming as ever, Ueda. Anyway, Nakamaru should count himself lucky that Meisa only thinks him capable of managing the invitations for this massive wedding she’s throwing.”

“Massive?” Kame asks. “I thought it was going to be a small private thing…?”

“The first lesson of marriage,” Nakamaru says, with a fond smile, “is that somehow, you’ll do anything to make your bride happy.”

Ueda, who’s sitting on the arm of the chair, looking casually at ease in his loose sweater, rolls his eyes. “Gross,” he says, but Kame notices that he fingers his own wedding ring as he speaks, and maybe there’s a secret softness around his eyes. “You’re forty. You’re too old to sound like a character in a _Getsu-9_ , don’t you think?”

“Hey!” Koki says, stretching his arms over his head before settling back into his place on the sofa. “Some of us still do _Getsu-9_ dramas.”

Kame steps over the stamps and special pens on the floor, and finds a place on the sofa next to Koki. He leans over toward Koki and bats his eyelashes, and Koki chuckles and wraps an arm over Kame’s shoulders. “Koki-sama, how do you get all the good roles?”

“Shut-up, movie star,” Koki says, and affectionately messes up Kame’s hair, like they’re still teenagers. “Help me put these nicely printed stickers with addresses onto these envelopes straight. I keep making them crooked.”

“Why do _you_ get a helper?” Junno says petulantly, and Koki grins wolfishly. 

“Because Kame-chan is mine,” Koki says, and presses their cheeks together. Kame laughs and flicks him, grabbing a handful of envelopes and the top sheet of stickers and pulling away. He pulls a magazine off the table and sets it on his lap for use as a makeshift table.

Kame peels the first label off without reading it, fixing it carefully into the center of the envelope, eyeing the upper and lower margins with the eye of a perfectionist. Kame’s the worst kind of perfectionist for this sort of work, though. His artistic talent is mostly expressed through fashion and poetry and art appreciation—he doesn’t have the steady hands of an artist, and the label still looks crooked even after he carefully contemplates the position for a good minute before he presses down on the adhesive. 

`Akanishi Jin`, it says, when Kame holds it up to look at it. He blinks, like it’s a hallucination, but it isn’t, not by a long shot. Kame feels goosebumps on the back of his neck.

“Nakamaru,” Kame says calmly, and something must be off about his voice, because there’s a strange hush that falls over all of them in the room. “There’s an invitation here for…” Kame swallows. “For Jin?”

Nakamaru scratches the back of his neck. “Yeah,” Nakamaru says. “I was going to give it to his parents and have them forward it.” No one seems surprised. Oh, Kame thinks. A conspiracy.

“You all knew.” Kame says it softly, but they all hear him. No one denies anything. “Did you think I couldn’t handle it?”

“Of course not,” Ueda says. His fingers tap impatiently on his knees. “You’re not someone who needs to be sheltered, Kamenashi. You never have been.”

“But still,” Koki says, and his voice is much gentler than Ueda’s. “We were going to tell you if he said yes.” Koki sighs. “None of us are really sure what happened between you two—“

“Nothing,” Kame says, and Ueda barks an incredulous laugh that makes both Koki and Nakamaru turn to glare at him while Junno looks awkwardly out the window. 

“…And we weren’t sure if it would make you upset, and in case it _would_ , we didn’t want to say anything until it was necessary.”

“Like if he says yes,” Kame says. Kame’s thumb swipes along the edges of the adhesive label, pressing them again to ensure they are good and stuck. Jin’s name burns into his retinas.

“Yeah,” Nakamaru says. “Like if he says yes.”

The light fixture in Nakamaru’s flat, the one on the living room ceiling, is very loud, Kame thinks. Kame can hear the distinct buzzing of it above him. He wonders if it’s about to burn out. “You should change the bulb,” Kame says, and Junno lets out a high-pitched giggle, and they’re all relaxing.

Kame thinks it’s strange that Jin doesn’t even have to be here; doesn’t even have to _show up_ , to cause tension in KAT-TUN. A whisper of his name is enough to set them all on edge, and that’s always been true.

“I wonder if he’ll come,” Junno says, laying back on the floor and crossing his arms behind his head. 

“Probably not,” Kame says, and it’s like there’s an ocean inside his ears. This isn’t a big deal. Kame sees Jin’s name written down all the time, he doesn’t know why it’s so surreal now. Maybe because it’s Nakamaru’s wedding

“The last time I saw him was at a wedding,” Ueda says. “Junno’s.”

“Yeah,” Koki says. “Has it really been seven years?”

“Fifteen postcards,” Kame says, and every inhales burns. The edges of Kame’s vision flicker. He thinks about that large map, and wonders how anyone can possibly find someone else in a world so big. He thinks about the box of postcards under his bed.

A whisper of his name is enough to make Kame’s control weaken just enough.

Jin isn’t really something they talk about. Kame thinks it keeps them sane, because they’d all watched Jin fall away from them.

 

*

Jin comes back from Los Angeles quiet. Not that he doesn’t talk—he talks up a storm, regaling Koki with stories about girls in nightclubs and twenty-four hour Mexican food restaurants. He taunts Nakamaru with the same enthusiasm as always, and laughs as he flubs the choreography, and bickers with Junno at rehearsals. He reads Yamapi’s texts aloud to Kame in a high-pitched voice that doesn’t sound anything like Yamapi, and hums along with Ueda as he fools around on the piano. 

He makes so much _noise_ , but inside, he’s quiet.

It’s like Jin’s locked away a part of himself, and Kame misses it fiercely, misses it like it’s one of his lungs, and now he breathes slow and labored and there’s never enough air.

“Kame,” Jin says. They’re sitting outside, and Jin’s got a cigarette hanging loosely between his lips. The end’s turning to ash rather quickly, and Jin’s only lazily smoking it. Kame plucks it and brings it to his own mouth, taking a drag and then blowing smoke up into the sky. “Have you ever…” Jin’s voice trails off, and Jin turns to look at him. Kame studies Jin, and he can see all that quiet in Jin’s eyes. 

“Ever what?” Kame asks, and Jin shifts, and his knuckles are white, fists clenched and resting gracelessly on his thighs. Kame starts to reach toward Jin’s arm, but Jin seems to sense his movement and moves a little away. 

Kame bites his lip. Right. They aren’t close enough for those sorts of touches anymore. Kame wonders, sometimes, if he and Jin are the only people in the world whose friendship is moving in a slow and tragic reverse; if it’ll keep slowly devolving until Jin and Kame pass by each other on the street and don’t bother to wave hello.

It’s like poison in his blood, to think of a world in which he and Jin aren’t more than strangers who used to care. 

“Never mind,” Jin says, and he lies back in the grass, hair splayed behind him. He looks like the Vitruvian Man, Kame thinks, arms and legs spread like he’s about to hug the sky. “Just… Never mind.”

“You can’t tell me?” Kame asks, and Jin looks at him, a flicker really, one that burns through Kame like a wave of lava. Jin’s got a dusting of pink across his cheeks then, and Kame feels like the distance between them now is vast. More vast than Jin, sending piecemeal emails to Kame from Los Angeles. Kame takes another puff of Jin’s cigarette and passes it back. Jin hauls himself up and takes it, resting it against his lower lip for a moment in contemplation.

“I want to,” Jin says, after a long pause. “I really want to.” He brings his hands in to cover his face. There’s no wind today, and the air is stifling. “But I can’t.”

“I wish I could find you,” Kame says, and Jin is looking at him again. Kame doesn’t know how to explain himself. There’s a block, it seems, and Kame’s not even sure what he means, only Jin used to be so loud, and now there’s all this unbearable _silence._

“I’m right here,” Jin says softly, and their gazes lock. Kame can’t see Jin in there at all. Jin’s lips are pressed together, like he always does when he’s nervous, and Kame’s eyes follow the vein in his neck that stands out harshly as Jin clenches his jaw.

“No,” Kame says, and this time, he does reach out to Jin’s face, and tucks a wayward piece of hair gently behind Jin’s ear. “You’re not.” Jin freezes at the touch, his eyes searching Kame’s for something that Kame doesn’t get. Then Jin takes a long pull at his cigarette, and closes his eyes.

Jin exhales heavily, then, and his eyes open again, and he’s regarded Kame with this melancholy sadness that Kame can’t place. “I guess you’re right,” Jin says.

“Why?” Kame asks, and Jin’s skin is so tan, and Jin’s face is so round. Jin’s self-conscious about the weight; Kame reads it in Jin’s anxious glances at his own arms and stomach that he only allows himself when he thinks no one is looking. Kame thinks Jin is beautiful regardless of chubby cheeks and soft bellies. Kame still wants to hug him close.

“I can’t be here,” Jin says. “I’ll never be able to be myself here.”

“You can be yourself with me,” Kame tells him, and there’s an edge to Kame’s voice that he never meant to allow. Jin swallows, and fills his mouth with smoke, letting it blow out of his nose. 

Jin looks, for just a moment, like he wants to fall apart, and Kame wishes he were still someone who could hold him together. “No,” Jin says. “No, I really can’t.”

Kame reaches forward and reclaims the cigarette one last time. It tastes strongly of mint, like Jin’s favorite toothpaste. Kame remembers using it when he was a kid, the way it felt for their minty breath to mingle as they whispered gossip to each other beneath the duvet in Jin’s bed, until Jin’s mother would peek her head into the room and lift one commanding eyebrow at the two of them. “Stop chatting, boys, and go to sleep,” she’d say, and then she’d wink to let them know she wasn’t too upset.

“Especially not with you,” Jin says finally, and Kame closes his eyes. But Jin’s image is still there behind his eyelids, and the cigarette is finished: nothing but burnt ash and a useless butt. Jin gestures for him to just put it out in the grass, but Kame frowns at him, and Jin sighs, standing up and jogging over to the trash receptacle. 

Jin makes sure the flame is extinguished by jamming the end into the metal of the wastebasket, then drops it in the trash. Kame stands too, and walks over to meet him. Jin watches him approach. The backs of their hands touch, and Jin takes a step back.

Jin used to touch as often as he breathed. Now there’s space between Jin and everyone else that feels forced, like Jin is holding himself back. Kame doesn’t know why. He’d longed for the simple touches that reassured him Jin was there. 

“I missed you, while you were gone,” Kame offers. Kame still misses Jin, even though Jin’s close enough that Kame could clasp hands with him like he did when they were younger. “I just… miss you.”

“I miss you too,” Jin says, and Kame licks his lips. Jin follows the motion, and turns away. “I…do.”

“But it’s not enough,” Kame says.

“I’m sorry,” Jin answers, and Kame feels like he’s looking through thick, thick glass.

*

Jin might have risen in the East, but he set in the West. Jin set over there in America, and the Jin that Kame knew never really came back.

 

*

“Uchi says you took your doorbell out,” Kame says, and Ryo laughs, adjusting the guitar in his lap. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Says the man who will only wear a t-shirt once,” Ryo replies, running a hand through his shaggy hair. “We all have our quirks. I just don’t want to be bothered.”

“I wear them more than _once_. It’s just that they wear out,” Kame says. “The ink fades, and then they aren’t bright anymore.”

“Not after one wash,” Ryo says, and shakes his head. “Where do you keep them all? This place isn’t that big.”

“Next time we’ll have coffee at your place, then,” Kame snaps back playfully. “Except I suspect you won’t know when I arrive, because I don’t know where your spare key is and you don’t have a doorbell.” Kame stretches his legs out along the sofa, enjoying the soft feel of worn-in jeans. 

“This is not the way to thank someone who’s helping you out,” Ryo says. “Also, I know you are not casting domestic stones at me when you have a creepy shrine to your ex-boyfriend covering the entire west wall of your apartment. “

One thing Kame values about Ryo is that he doesn’t pull punches. Ryo never treats Kame like a fragile child, or like Kame’ll crumble if he mentions Jin’s name. In a way, that nonchalance makes Kame feel stronger. Kame’s always done best when there are people with expectations he doesn’t want to disappoint.

“He’s not my ex-boyfriend,” Kame says. “And it’s not a shrine.”

“Whatever,” Ryo says. His t-shirt’s a pale pink, and it stretches across strong shoulders. Kame recognizes the shirt—he’s pretty sure it used to belong to Yamapi, years ago. Kame himself has got a shirt of Koki’s that he stole on accident during the Chain concert tour in 2012. “I’m not really concerned about all the ways you and Akanishi managed to avoid admitting you had a thing for each other. I’m concerned about this soundtrack. I can’t believe you’re singing. It’s been a couple years.”

“I know,” Kame says, after deciding not to address Ryo’s accusation. “And KAT-TUN is going to sing a few songs for the documentary, too. Acoustic.”

“How’d the interview for that go, by the way?” Ryo asks, and he says it offhandedly, but Kame laughs.

“Like Uchi didn’t tell you,” Kame says. “I may have had some issues.”

“You didn’t tell your interviewer about the shrine right? That might make you look bad.”

“It’s not a shrine!”

“What is it, then?” Ryo says, and he strums a little too hard across the strings, and the discordant sound echoes through the flat. “Look, I know you’ve got your shit together, Kamenashi, and Jin is, or maybe was, fuck if I know, a really good friend of mine, too, but this is…”

“What if it was Uchi?” Kame interrupts. “What if it was _your_ best friend?” Ryo sets the guitar down on the coffee table and leans back against the chair. “Would you just… write him off?”

“Probably not,” Ryo says, leaning back in the armchair, legs spread. He scratches at his stomach idly, but his eyes are watching Kame intensely. Kame can feel them, even as he stares at his map. “Was Jin your best friend?”

Kame doesn’t have a best friend. Kame has people he holds dear; people he holds so close that he can’t imagine his life without them. There’re the people he talks to everyday, fully grown-up pop stars, and there are the people he’s sought out, like fashion designers and artists and photographers. There are people he’s met through baseball, too, because nothing brings people together like mutual respect of the world’s greatest game. Kame’s got his family, and his dog Ieyasu, and two ex-lovers he still meets once every couple of months for a casual lunch and still feel like people Kame doesn’t have to wear a mask around.

Jin’s not any of those people. Jin _used_ to be Kame’s best friend, when they were reckless teenagers with no regard for cameras or gossip. But what they had, what they _have_ , is something completely different. Jin and Kame have been, in turns, so close their hearts beat in sync, and so far that Kame struggles to remember what Jin looks like when he genuinely laughs. Kame’s not quite sure how to explain the quivering line between himself and Jin, one that Kame can feel even now, if he presses two fingers to his wrist to feel his pulse. Kame can’t ignore it, and he can’t make it go away.

“He was my best _something,_ ” Kame replies, and Ryo exhales, loud and heavy. The shirt’s got a tiny hole in the armpit, and Kame’s brow furrows. “Your shirt has a hole in it. You wear it too much.”

“That just means I love it,” Ryo says. “And I’m not scared to show it.” Kame looks over and meets Ryo’s eyes. Ryo’s looking at him like he’s trying to peel back Kame’s skin with his eyes to see the machinery that must be underneath. 

Kame’s not a machine; he’s flesh and blood and a little bit of heartache.

“Oh,” Kame says, and Ryo blows air out of his nose, stirring his bangs. His whipcord thin arms wrap around himself, and bites down on his lower lip. 

“I think we need beers,” Ryo says. “Wanna try and teach me the rules of baseball again?”

“I’ve been trying to for twenty years,” Kame says. “I haven’t managed it yet. Aren’t we working on a song?”

“I’m tired. More later.” Ryo stretches his neck. He does look tired, flexing his fingers back and forth like he’s used them too much. Kame eyes the clock on the kitchen wall, that he can barely make out from the sofa. He wishes he had better vision. The small hand points to the eleven, which means they’ve been at it for three and a half hours. Maybe they do need a break.

“But why baseball?”

“You like baseball. Why? Would you rather stare at that map a while longer, looking like the red-headed chick from Titanic after the boat goes down?”

“Titanic is Jin’s favorite movie,” Kame says, and Ryo scoffs.

“Tomb Raider is Jin’s favorite movie,” Ryo says, and Kame raises an eyebrow at him. Ryo chuckles dryly, standing up “Oh, it’s the bitch brow. You must be pretty confident, then. Really? Titanic?” Ryo shakes his head. “I should revoke his man-pass.” 

“You’d have to find him first,” Kame says, and the smile slips from Ryo’s face. “Who knows what his favorite movie is, these days.”

“Your best _something_ ,” Ryo says, and Kame’s throat is dry, because Kame doesn’t like the look in Ryo’s eyes, because it looks like sympathy and Kame’s never wanted that from Ryo. “Your worst ‘something’, too, maybe.”

“How about those beers?” Kame says, and the mood breaks, and Ryo chuckles. 

“Just one and you’ll be drunk, lightweight!”

“Yeah,” Kame says. “Probably. Hopefully drunk enough to forget the futility of explaining baseball to a lost cause.”

And life moves on, slowly, in laughs and smiles and beer spilt on Kame’s expensive couch, and Kame thinks only once about a wedding invitation that might already be in the mail.

 

*

 

Kame never tells anyone, but he’s got one of Jin’s sweatshirts, faded and old, and when it’s really cold in January, so cold the windows ice up with frost, Kame shrugs the hoodie over his silk pajamas and closes his eyes to memories of a eighteen year-old Jin, who always threw a warm arm over his best friend’s hip, making it easier for them both to fall asleep in unfamiliar beds. 

 

*

 

The last week before they start at the Tokyo Dome for _Cartoon KAT-TUN II You_ is supposed to be the week that Jin finally gets the choreography right. It’s supposed to be the week that they all readjust to Jin’s quirks and fall into step again.

But leading up to that week, Jin gets quieter and quieter, until Kame is pretty sure Jin’s just living inside his own head, because he doesn’t react to anything anyone around him says or does. 

They arrive at the hotel, and they’re staying two to a room, and Kame’s with Ueda and Nakamaru is with Jin. Junno is with Koki and they’re already cracking stupid jokes and snickering at each other. 

Jin disappears into his room before dinner, and doesn’t come down. Kame lifts his brow at Nakamaru, who purses his mouth and shakes his head in response to Kame’s unvoiced query. “He says he’s not hungry,” Nakamaru says, and Kame spends dinner thinking about Jin’s sleepy, vacant eyes and the downward tilt to the corner of his lips, pushing the food around on his plate with wooden chopsticks. As soon as he can without being rude, he excuses himself, standing up from the table with as little fanfare as possible. 

“Everything okay?” Ueda asks, darting a quick look at Kame’s mutilated dinner, and Kame nods. 

“Jin,” Kame says, and Nakamaru glances up from his conversation with Koki to look at Kame, and then he digs a hand into his black trousers, and when his hand emerges again it’s holding a card-key. 

“You might need this,” Nakamaru says. “Don’t touch my clothes.”

Kame laughs, even as he slips the key into the front pocket of his flannel shirt. “As if,” Kame says, and grins easily, even as he’s mentally already halfway down the hallway to Jin’s room. “I’m terribly allergic to argyle.”

“Similar to my plaid flannel allergy, probably,” Nakamaru says, and Kame shrugs, and rocks uneasily from foot to foot. 

“Oh go on, Kame,” Koki says. “Check on Jin before you freak out.”

There’s no one in the elevator to awkwardly ask for Kame’s autograph. There’s no one in the hallway, either, and Kame’s grateful he doesn’t have to worry about the fact that he’s left his sunglasses downstairs. He hopes Koki will notice and pick them up for him. He should send a text, but he’ll do it in a bit. He’s just…Kame doesn’t know why, but he’s worried. About Jin.

Kame doesn’t bother to knock; just slides the key-card into the door and when the little light turns green, quietly turns the handle. 

The room is dark. Kame can barely make out the shape of Jin in the dark, a lump under the duvet that doesn’t move, doesn’t shift. If Kame narrows his eyes, he can see the slight up and down motion that tells him it’s not a corpse lying there, but it’s such a shallow movement that Kame wonders if he’s imagining it. 

Kame doesn’t hesitate, not really. He just takes off his shoes and lies down on the bed on top of the covers, pressing his chest to Jin’s back, and dropping an arm over where he thinks Jin’s waist is. Now that he’s this close, he can _feel_ the rise and fall of Jin’s chest, but Jin still doesn’t move or acknowledge Kame’s presence.

Jin isn’t asleep, though. When Jin’s asleep, he’s not this still. His body sprawls out, limbs stretching across every available surface, mouth open and soft snores that sound more like sniffles emerging from his boneless frame. Jin’s not curled up in the dark, still wearing his hoodie, wrapped up in a blanket like he’s trying to hide from the world.

“Jin, what’s wrong?” Kame says, and he whispers, because it seems wrong to break the silence. Kame also feels a little like he’s trespassing. “Is everything…okay?” Kame’s not sure why he asks that question, because it’s obvious that everything isn’t okay. 

Jin doesn’t answer. But his hand does creep out from under the covers, just enough so that his fingertips brush Kame’s. Kame scoots himself a little closer, the metal studs of his jeans digging uncomfortably into his thighs, and Jin feels rather amorphous in his arms. Kame presses his cheek to what might be Jin’s back, and he can feel the beating of Jin’s heart now, so slow it’s like Jin’s pumping blood to the rest of his body through molasses. 

Suddenly, Jin turns, spinning in Kame’s embrace, and Jin is facing him now. The duvet falls away, slightly, and now Jin’s legs shift against Kame’s legs, and it’s denim on denim. Kame doesn’t move his arm away- Jin, the same Jin who flinched from his touch only a week ago, doesn’t seem to want him to. Instead he slides one leg between Kame’s two, and presses his face into the hollow of Kame’s throat. Kame wishes there was enough light to see Jin’s face, but maybe it’ll be easier to get an answer in the dark.

“Jin?”

“I don’t know,” Jin says, and his voice is dry and crackling, like he hasn’t used it for days. And maybe he hasn’t—Jin’s been so withdrawn, responding in nods to all questions asked and sitting on the floor with his knees drawn up to his chest whenever left to his own devices. 

“You don’t know what?” Kame asks, and he runs his hand up and down Jin’s spine, feeling the ridges. Jin shivers in his hold, and Kame wonders if Jin is cold, or if maybe Jin’s uncomfortable. 

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” Jin says, and he presses himself closer to Kame, like it’s normal, like there was never a distance between them of Jin’s making, and it’s still there, that energy like gravity that pulls Kame toward Jin. “Is it bad, for me to touch you like this?”

“No,” Kame says fervently. “ _No_.”

“Are you sure?”

“What do you need me to do?” Kame asks, and he’s adrift. All he knows to do is continue the steady pass of his hand across the vertebrae of Jin’s back, and let Jin bury his face in Kame’s shoulder as he tries to shut out the world.

“Nothing,” Jin says. “Just… stay. Even if you don’t want to, just stay.”

“Stay?” Kame asks, and he wants to tell Jin that it’s never Kame that goes away, it’s Jin. Kame’s always stayed. It’s always Jin who leaves. 

“Yes,” Jin says, and it sounds like he’s forcing the words out, and Kame’s quiet so he doesn’t accidentally interrupt. “If you’re here, I won’t get lost in the dark.”

“Do you want me to turn on the light?” Kame asks, and Jin sighs, and his lips are warm, and his breath is hot, even through the material of Kame’s shirt. 

“What’s the point?” Jin says, and it’s bleak. Kame doesn’t know that he’s ever heard Jin sound like this. Jin is always so full of something, even if it’s anger or boredom or disdain. But the man wrapped around Kame, clinging to Kame and struggling to even speak… Jin is empty, and it’s scary. Kame doesn’t know how to fill Jin up again, or make Jin fill himself up again. “It’ll still be dark.” 

“Jin,” Kame starts, and Jin just grabs softly at a piece of Kame’s flannel, and his grip isn’t tight, but it’s a little bit desperate anyway. “I’ll stay,” Kame says, and Jin doesn’t say anything else.

Kame doesn’t either. Nakamaru comes in much later, and he looks surprised to see Kame still there. He’s holding another key, and Kame wonders if he got it from the front desk. He feels a little guilty that he’d essentially locked the man out of his own room. 

Nakamaru, from what Kame can make out in the dark, doesn’t seem upset, he just quietly goes about his evening ablutions, settling into his twin bed. He turns on his bedside lamp for a moment, and Jin, who Kame thinks might be dozing, flinches into Kame, and Nakamaru tilts his head at Kame.

Kame looks back at him with wide eyes, and Nakamaru must see his hopeless confusion, because he bites at his lip and stares at Jin in distress. 

Jin is so still and silent, and Nakamaru knows as well as Kame that Jin’s noisy by nature. Jin’s a film not a portrait photograph.

Nakamaru just turns out the bathroom light, because there’s nothing either of them can do.

Kame sleeps like that, with the cotton of Jin’s hoodie mashed into his cheek and bits of Jin’s hair sneaking into his mouth.

When he wakes up in the morning, sticky and hot, Jin hasn’t moved. Kame has to pee, has to shed his flannel shirt that clings to him with sweat, and the whole left side of his body is asleep, in that way that make you feel like you’ve got dead limbs, and when Kame tries to move there’s that almost painful tingle as his arm starts coming back to life. 

Jin doesn’t react when Kame lifts his arm, and Kame slips from the bed, retreating into the bathroom. He washes his face while he’s in there, and when he comes back out about ten minutes later, Jin’s right where Kame left him. Kame doesn’t think Jin is asleep, but he can’t be sure.

“Jin, I’m going to my room to shower,” Kame says, and the sunlight from the window filters across Jin’s face, reflecting in his hair. Jin blinks at Kame twice, and doesn’t speak. “Is that okay?”

Jin doesn’t move at all for three days. He doesn’t eat, he doesn’t drink; he just lies there, motionless, more of a statue than a man. He doesn’t listen to music, doesn’t react when people touch him, just blinks lazily when Kame speaks and covers his face when the sun comes out.

Kame’d had plans. To see some local sights before they head back to Tokyo, to sleep until noon. To trick Koki into watching that silly kids’ movie that just came out at the theater that he’s been seeing the adverts for all over the trains and venues. 

But instead, Kame tries to make Jin drink water, tries to trick Jin into opening his eyes, into speaking to Kame again. 

Kame doesn’t understand, but he’s not going to leave Jin like this. He can’t. That’s not what friends do. That’s not what… whatever-Kame-and-Jin-are-to-each-other do either. 

So Kame stays, and runs fingers through Jin’s greasy hair, and on the third day, Jin gets up. He goes to the bathroom, and closes the door. Kame hears the shower turn on, and when Jin emerges, half an hour later, he looks like himself.

“Jin,” Kame says. “Why didn’t you get up?”

“I didn’t want to,” Jin says, and he looks at Kame, and a little of that emptiness is still there, but it’s pushed back, behind the part of Jin that Kame’s always know, the part that seems so full. “I don’t know.”

“Jin, maybe you should—“

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Jin says. “It’s over. I’m up.” His voice is so hoarse, and Kame’s not sure if Jin’ll be able to sing.

Jin can always sing, though, even when he’s so sick he’s dizzy, so Kame’s not entirely sure why he’s worried about that.

Maybe because it’s easier to worry about that than all of this. Maybe because _this_ is a different type of sick than Kame’s ever encountered in Jin. He can’t blackmail Jin into taking cough medicine, and tell him he’ll get everyone else sick if he doesn’t rest. Kame doesn’t know the fix. 

Jin looks at Kame, sitting down next to him on the bed, normal as you please, like he hasn’t frightened Kame down to his bones. He reaches out with his right hand toward Kame’s, and Kame lifts his own hand up to meet it. “Jin,” Kame says, and Jin’s name on Kame’s lips is more than an address. It’s everything Kame’s thinking, and Jin understands it. Even as everything changes; even with everything that stands between them, things Kame can’t begin to comprehend, they still have that. A connection that lets them sing back to back, Jin’s voice perfectly catching Kame’s and soaring high above it.

Jin links their fingers together, palm flat against palm. “ _Kizuna_ ,” Jin says, and he closes his eyes and breathes in. “Thank you.”

Kame studies Jin, and Jin’s unguarded posture. He hasn’t seen it since Jin came back from Los Angeles with that giant padlock on his heart. “You’re welcome,” Kame says, and there’s a clenching feeling in his gut that this won’t be the last time. 

But Kame thinks it’s okay to pretend for a while.

Between them, right now, it isn’t quiet, because the air is filled with unsaid words that ring loudly in Kame’s ears.

 

*

 

“I had my interview with Kita, today,” Ueda says, and it sounds like he’s writing as he’s talking. Maybe music, maybe weird little poems on napkins like he does sometimes, about things that don’t make sense to anyone but him. “I think he might be in love with you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kame says. “Am I really that good?”

“You know you are,” Ueda says, sounding impatient even though Kame doesn’t really think he is. “I think there’s just Koki left, now, and then we’re all done except for the recording of the song.”

“We all need to get together and rehearse,” Kame says. “But our schedules never match.”

“Some of us are a little too famous,” Ueda says, and Kame laughs.

“Yes,” Kame agrees. “Koki should stop getting those drama roles, shouldn’t he?”

“Definitely,” Ueda says, and Kame can imagine him tossing his hair over his shoulder as he speaks. “Of course it’s _Koki_ I’m talking about. It’s just _Koki_ who’s too busy to practice.”

“Sorry,” Kame says. “My hours on set are crazy right now. We’re filming every night and I’m stumbling home at ten in the morning and sleeping until four, when I get up and do it all over again.”

“Hey, it’s fine,” Ueda says. “We’ll figure it out. We can’t be _that_ rusty.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Kame says with a chuckle. “I couldn’t hit any notes at all when I was playing around with Ryo.”

“It’s like riding a bike,” Ueda says. “You never forget how to sing with your boyband.”

Kame laughs aloud into the phone, and Ueda laughs too. “Alright. Call me on Monday, and I should have my schedule for filming by then.”

“Great,” Ueda says. “A wedding and a show in one week. Wow, just like the old days, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Kame says, and there’s a pleasant hum in his belly; the one that tells him he’s content. 

 

*

 

“Jin has sad eyes,” Kame’s mother says. “Not all the time, but sometimes… he has sad eyes.”

“Ueda thinks he’s just getting cocky,” Kame replies, and Kame’s mother looks at him, all slow blinks like the kind Kame does too, when he thinks the person he’s talking to is saying something beneath their intelligence. 

“Cocky?” Kame’s mother says, and she puts a hand on Kame’s shoulder. “Does that sound right to you?”

“No,” Kame admits. Jin is like a snake that needs to shed his skin, uncomfortable and hot and avoidant. Jin won’t even look in the mirror sometimes. Jin knows he can sing but he’s eager about it, like a puppy. He just wants to sing all the time because he likes it, not because he’s better at it than everyone else. And even though they’re in the midst of debuting—filming PVs where the make-up artists fawn over Jin’s pretty face, Jin doesn’t seem to relish it. It makes him more itchy then pleased, Kame thinks. Jin just looks like he’s trying to stay afloat.

“Jin has sad eyes, Kazuya. Such sad eyes.”

When Kame thinks about it, he knows his mother must be right.

 

*

 

Kame’s lips are dry.

“Stop licking them so much, then,” Jin says, scratching at his nose, and Kame wants to laugh, because they’re both so hopelessly nervous.

“We’re going to be okay,” Kame says, and Jin shuffles back and forth in place, looking anywhere but at Kame. “It doesn’t have to ruin us.”

Jin laughs, and it’s rough and grates in Kame’s ears in a way Jin’s voice hardly ever does, because Jin’s voice is usually crawls like honey down Kame’s spine. “I’m not like you,” Jin says. “I can’t pretend.”

Jin’s eyes are glassy, and Kame wonders if he’ll cry.

 

*

 

Koki grabs Kame around the waist when Kame walks up to him, and Kame laughs and tries to squirm out of Koki’s grip. “Careful, Koki, or your wife might get jealous.”

“Oh, she knows my carnal passion for you is too much to resist,” Koki replies, and Kame snorts, pushing an elbow lightly into Koki’s stomach to make him let go. “Everyone knows I love Kame-chan best.”

“But Koki, if everyone knows, there’s no thrill in it anymore!” Kame says dramatically. “I’ll have to find a new secret man-lover to satisfy my lust for excitement and adventure.” 

“Kame-chan, I’m wounded,” Koki says, although with the grin on his face, Kame thinks Koki is anything but heartbroken. “I thought what we had was special.”

“You know,” Kame says, “we don’t really get paid for fanservice anymore.”

“My love for you is real,” Koki replies, and straightens his rings on his fingers. Koki’s wearing too many belts for Kame’s aesthetic tastes, but that’s Koki in a nutshell, and Kame wouldn’t really change anything about him. “I never need to be paid to molest you.”

“Ah, I’m flattered Koki, really I am,” Kame says, forcing his lips into a straight line as he tries to contain his laughter. “But unfortunately, you’re not my type.”

Koki pressed a heavily jeweled hand to his heart, and pulls a face like he’s aghast. “Kame-chan, what could possibly stand between us? I’m older than you, we’ve known each other for years, and I’m devilishly handsome…”

“I’m sorry,” Kame says. “It’s not you, it’s me.” Koki looks at Kame closer, eyes sparkling with mirth. “I can’t date married men with tattoos.”

“That exact combination, huh?” Koki asks, and they both dissolve into giggles. Hanging out with Koki is always like leaping head first into a swimming pool of youth, Kame thinks, because he feels like a kid splashing playfully in the shallow end, sputtering at the cool water. “Damn, I guess I’m out of luck.”

“You really are,” Kame says, and Koki’s vest is made of crushed velvet, and Kame wonders if any of them will ever really get too old to keep pulling the same tricks. Kame hopes not. “I hope you don’t take it too hard.”

“Naw,” Koki says, shoving his hands in his pockets as he and Kame start walking. “The missus _was_ starting to get a bit jealous. Probably because I’ve been cutting your pictures out of the newspapers and making a collage.” Kame chokes, and Koki smirks at him. “That totally counts as a laugh. I win.”

“Were we competing?” Kame asks wryly, licking his lips. Kame looks up the street, but he doesn’t see any people who look like they might be following him looking for a scoop. It’s pretty early on a Wednesday morning, so Kame thinks it’s a little bit safer than usual.

“We’re always competing, Kame-chan. Or you are, anyway.”

“Not true,” Kame rebuts. 

“You wouldn’t even let your six year old niece win at hide-and-seek. Because then you would have lost.”

“I taught her the value of victory.”

“You made her buy you things when she lost,” Koki says, and he sounds amused, but Kame doesn’t get what’s so funny. _You have to work for victories_ , he thinks, and there’s no reason not to learn that at an early age. Kame’s life has been a long competition that Kame’s been trying not to lose. “You’re sick.”

Sometimes there are detours from the goal, but overall Kame’s done pretty well for himself. “My niece goes to the best university in Japan. A healthy sense of competition has served her well.”

“Fine, fine,” Koki says, raising his hands in a placating manner, waving them in front of his face. “You’re not some sort of freak because you have to win everything.”

“It’s Darwinian,” Kame says, stretching his arms above his head. The shoulders of his jacket are a bit tight. Kame has been playing more baseball as the weather gets warmer. “Survival of the fittest.”

“It’s hide-and-seek,” Koki says, and Kame looks at him. 

“Maybe if the tigers were better at hide-and-seek they wouldn’t be going extinct,” Kame informs Koki pointedly, and Koki’s surprised laugh is so sharp and clear in the air that Kame wonders if it’s like a siren’s call that will bring paparazzi to them like moths to a flame. 

“You’re too much, Kame,” Koki says, and his eyes are so bright. Koki’s always been most attractive like this, in Kame’s opinion. The glowering image had never suited Koki, Kame thinks, because Koki is so light at heart. “I hope you won’t turn shopping into a competition.”

Kame gives Koki a once-over. “I choose everything,” Kame says. “Deal?”

“Deal,” Koki agrees, and he looks a little relieved to have the decisions for what the groomsmen are going to wear taken out of his hands. “I’m not the go-to guy for suits.”

“Well, if we ever need someone to dress us all up to infiltrate a seedy hip-hop night club, Koki, we’ll all know who to call,” Kame says consolingly, and Koki nudges him with a hard shoulder. 

“Don’t be mean, Kame-chan,” Koki says, but he’s grinning and Kame knows he’s taken the joke in the spirit it was given. “I haven’t said a thing about your eyeliner, and it’s been a struggle.”

“I’m playing a rock and roll has-been for a movie,” Kame says. “I sort of like the eyeliner.”

“Of course you do,” Koki says, and holds the door for Kame, and they both enter the shop.

Koki, thankfully, knows Kame so well that he’s come prepared for hours of trying on suits. He manages to contain his eyerolls, too, which is more than Kame would have been able to say for Ueda. Kame had chosen his model well. 

“This one will do,” Kame says to the beleaguered shop assistant, Makino, who looks almost shocked that Kame’s made a decision. He’s got six discarded options for bowties hanging across his left arm, and six different shades of grey, the same jacket, across his right.

“Seriously?” He asks, his voice a squeak.

“Do you think I should keep looking?” Kame asks, purposefully making his voice unsure just to tease.

“No, sir, I mean, whatever you—“

“Kame-chan, don’t troll the man. He’s had a hard morning,” Koki says, hopping off the stool. “He likes this one, and we’ll need five of them. One of us is a bit taller than the rest of us, but Kamenashi here is the widest in the shoulder. We’ll come in for fittings after you get the order.”

“Yes, sir,” Makino says, and disappears into the back of the shop, presumably to make the orders.

“Don’t ruin my fun,” Kame says to Koki, and Koki sighs. 

“I’m getting a little hungry,” he says, and Kame realizes neither of them have eaten yet today. “Do you have time for lunch?”

“Yes,” Kame says, and absentmindedly scrawls his signature across the order form that Makino brings out to him, pausing halfway through as he remembers to carefully check the order. It’s fine, and he finishes with a flourish. “Where should we go?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Koki says. “I’m not on any projects right now.” Koki clears his throat. “Plus, I’ve got to talk to you.”

“Sounds serious,” Kame remarks as he gathers his things. Koki’s layering his chains back around his neck, making sure all the charms are straight and that none of the links are tangled. “Something wrong?”

“No,” Koki says mysteriously, and Kame frowns at him. “Oh relax, we’ll talk over lunch.”

They choose a pizzeria, and Kame tells himself not to think about how many calories are in each slice as they order, and it’s delicious. The cheese is greasy, but not too greasy, and Kame’s sure he won’t regret the choice later. People don’t really talk about his weight, anymore, but anyone who’s ever been a Japanese pop star carries that lingering… discomfort around food, even when they’ve developed a healthy attitude toward it. Well, maybe not Koki, Kame thinks, as he watches the other man devour his fifth slice, hands covered in tomato sauce.

Some things, Kame figures, just aren’t fair. 

“So what did you want to talk about?” Kame asks as he cuts another piece off his slice of pizza with his fork and knife. “Problems at home? Juri and the others doing okay?”

“Ah, yeah, everything’s fine on the home front, Kame-chan,” Koki says, setting his slice down, half-eaten. 

That’s how Kame knows it’s important. Koki folds his hands together in front of himself, eyes trained on Kame’s face. He looks sort of like a man about to fight a hungry bear, instead of like a man sitting across from a lifelong friend who eats his pizza with a fork and knife. “Then what?”

“He’s coming,” Koki says, after a moment, and Kame tilts his head to the side.

“Who? Santa? It’s May, Koki, we’ve got a bit of time before—“ It sinks in as he’s speaking; a slow realization. Koki’s looking at Kame nervously, and Kame wants to smile at him reassuringly but his face feels a little frozen. “What?” He says instead, and Koki swallows, taking a gulp of his soda and looking down to study the linoleum floor.

“Jin RSVPed. For the wedding. Nakamarad got it in the mail yesterday,” Koki says, and Kame wonders if Koki’s been wondering how to broach this to him all day.

“Did you draw the short straw?” Kame asks, and Koki smirks.

“Naw, I volunteered,” Koki replies. “After all, your _my_ secret gay lover, not anyone else’s.” Koki leans forward. “Unless you’d finally like to come clean on—“

“I wasn’t sleeping with Jin,” Kame bites out, and then catches himself, looking around the restaurant nervously to see if anyone might have heard. He glares at Koki, and then digs through his bag for his sunglasses, which he removes from the case and slides over his eyes to block out the Koki’s entertained gaze.

“I was going to say ‘Ramirez’,” Koki says dryly. “Or one of your other baseball boyfriends. Trust me, I’d have known if you were sleeping with Akanishi. Both of you would have been less stressed out all the time. And we wouldn’t have had to be in the middle of the intense stares you both traded even when you guys weren’t talking to each other.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kame says, taking a sip of his iced green tea. “And even if I _did_ , you must be kidding that it would have made anything better.”

“Maybe not for your image,” Koki answers, after a moment. “And maybe there might have been risks, what with the way the public was sort of obsessed about your relationship. But,” Koki stops, and sighs. “But I’m not really talking about KAT-TUN. There are other things in this world besides your reputation, you know.”

“Of course there are,” Kame says. “But to give this all up for—“

“Your heart?” Koki frowns. “Yeah. Who would do a silly thing like that?” Koki drums his fingers on the table, and Kame remembers the last time he ever saw Jin, and Jin asked Kame if Kame would ever come with him. 

“I don’t know,” Kame says, but maybe he does.

 

*

 

The third postcard comes in the middle of summer, when it’s hot enough that Kame doesn’t want to take the stairs. Kame doesn’t even want to check the mail, because the time he spends checking the mail is time spent not under cool water in the shower. 

Still, he’s expecting more letters from Sakamoto, who’s on holiday in America right now, and Kame’s been looking forward to those letters, which always come accompanied with cheesy photos of Sakamoto in a Tokyo Giant’s cap, and he always scribbles _Hayato_ in the corner, with little bunny ears, and Kame’s nephew is a big fan. So is Kame, for that matter, because he likes the younger man’s smile and he’s an awesome player. 

Kame’s freshly showered when he looks through the mail. It’s wedged in between a Coach keychain Kame ordered and the much-anticipated letter from Sakamoto. 

_Paris_ , Kame thinks. It’s a weird postcard, with the Eiffel Tower in the background, and a weird, slightly disproportionate elephant frolicking in the front, and peeks of what Kame thinks might be the Louvre on the left-hand side. And maybe weird is the wrong word. It’s fantastical, or maybe whimsical, and it’s got Jin written all over it. He can imagine Jin picking out this postcard, lips puckered in a thoughtful frown, bypassing downsized replicas of the Mona Lisa, and sensible cityscapes showcasing the Arc de Triomphe, and picking up this quirky card with a weird cartoony elephant because he knows Kame’d have picked a boring one. 

Kame’s always liked that about Jin. Jin, when he’s happy, is full of spontaneity; the kind of guy who thinks Paris is best represented in large cartoons and fractured snapshots. As Kame studies the image, trying to see, in his mind, Jin picking out this postcard, wandering the streets, stopping at small cafes and munching on bits of pastries as he peers into shop windows, he realizes that maybe it is. He’s seeing Paris through Jin’s eyes, as easy as this. 

Kame’s always wanted to live in Paris. He said so, in an interview once, and he’d meant it. He’s dreamed of casual mornings and satin robes and expensive coffee. He wonders if Jin’s doing all that. He wonders if Jin has a girlfriend, the kind who blow-dries her hair in the morning as Jin looks out across the city from an upper-level balcony, breathing in river-scented air.

Then Jin’s eyes, as he pulls back from kissing Kame long and slow in the winter snow, flash across the postcard, burning up from the Eiffel Tower, and Kame figures he doesn’t. 

Kame knows not to expect anything on the back of the card. This is only the third but the other two, coming at sixth month intervals, carried no greeting.

This one, though. Scrawled in rounded letters, the kind Jin’s perfected over the years until Kame can tell his Roman letters apart from anyone else’s no matter what, is the phrase ‘ _Il n'y a qu'un bonheur dans la vie, c'est d'aimer et d'être aimé_ ’.

Kame looks it up, later, on Goo, and it turns out to be a quote from a _“A Letter to Lina Calamatta,”_ a book by George Sand, a famous French writer famous for both her lovely prose and her wild lifestyle. Kame wonders how Jin knows about her—if he saw the quote somewhere, or if he saw a film about her, or if he’d looked this quote up just to make Kame’s palms sweat when he read the postcard. 

It means: “There is only one happiness in life, to love and to be loved.”

Kame wonders, most of all, what that means to Jin. Because Jin…Jin has always loved. And, Kame knows better than anyone, Jin has always been loved.

**Part Three**

 

*

 

Kame finds out Jin’s name has been taken off of Johnny’s web a week after it happens. There was a time when he would have been the first to know, but he’s become too good at avoiding anywhere that might mention Jin’s name to see the news. 

There was a time when anything Jin did might have meant Kame was doing it too.

But that time has long since passed when Kame hears about Akanishi Jin’s ‘disappearance’ on the news. Kame watches Jin’s face on the screen with a sense of disbelief, a sort of empty, echoing feeling of confusion and detachment that Kame associates with breaking a nail, or cutting his face shaving. This sort of brief flash of… something small, like a tiny gust of wind that makes the candles flicker, and the moment crystallizes in Kame’s memory, just like that.

Kame’s sitting on the sofa. He’s wearing his favorite t-shirt, a soft navy-blue one with an unraveling hem that’s faded with repeat washings. His jeans are artfully torn at the thighs, and there’s a hole in the toe of his right sock. His hair feels greasy. His eye itches, just enough to irritate, but not enough to warrant scratching at. His lips feel chapped.

The montages of Jin across the screen seem to move in slow motion. Kame feels a little dizzy, and it’s like there’s water rushing in his ears, muting out the sound of Seasons as it plays over and over again in the background as the news reporter discusses the case.

“Akanishi was a no-show for five days at scheduled appearances. Many wonder if this is a publicity stunt by Akanishi in order to raise interest in his upcoming single,” the reporter says, and why does Kame feel so lost?

His cell phone is ringing. “Kame,” Nakamaru says on the other end of the line. “You watching the news?”

“Yeah,” Kame says, or tries to say, but his voice comes out as a harsh whisper, crackling along the word.

Nakamaru seems to understand. “No one’s heard from him, Kame. Not Yamashita, not Nishikido…No one. His mom says he left a note, and that’s it.”

Kame hears Nakamaru, but it’s from a distance. Nakamaru, waiting for Kame’s response with steady, even breaths, is like an anchor to reality that Kame wishes he could cling to, adrift as he is right now. “He said that he couldn’t do this anymore,” Kame says. “The last time.” Dry lips. “He meant it, this time.”

“Kame, are you going to be okay?” Nakamaru says, after a moment’s hesitation. “Do you need—“

“It’s fine,” Kame says. “I’m fine. I just… I need to go. Do something.” Kame says, and Nakamaru sighs.

“Okay,” he replies. “Call if you need anything.” There’s a rustling sound on the other end of the phone, as if Nakamaru is casting about for something to say, shuffling his weight from foot to foot, the collar of his button up rubbing against the receiver like it always does. “Anything.”

“Thanks,” Kame says, and ends the call, tossing his phone to the other side of the sofa.

But it’s impossible to sit there. 

Kame walks to the door, slipping into his black boots and sitting on the edge of the _genkan_ to lace them up. His fingers are trembling. _It’s fine_ , he thinks, because he’s tired, after all. Three days spent with only four hours of sleep a night filming his new drama. That’s why it’s hard to focus on the laces. It’s why his eyes feel so blurry, too, he figures. 

He throws on a scarf and a hat, too, and grabs his coat on the way out the door. The hallway isn’t heated, and neither is the elevator. Kame shivers. The lobby almost feels too hot, and Kame quickly waves to the guard standing stationary at the door. The front of cold wind hits his face, and it stings. It slices at Kame’s cheeks, _are they wet?_ , and pulls at the ends of his hair, making them cling to the sides of his neck.

There are no paparazzi waiting outside his apartment building, like Kame half-expects there to be. It’s for the best, really, because Kame isn’t wearing make-up, and there’s a hole in his sock, and he knows that even if in his big black boots, no one else ever will, and it wouldn’t really do to be ambushed by a camera crew right now.

Kame finds himself in the park near his building when he blinks. It’s not that he’s planned on coming here, but he’s not surprised that this is where he ended up. The grass is frozen beneath his feet. It’s brown and crunches as he walks off the path, and toward the trees. 

In the summer, there are picnics on this lawn, but in the heart of winter, the park is deserted, the occasional sparrow the only visitor.

Kame remembers a day in December many years ago. He remembers the way Jin’s hair had stuck to Jin’s lips, the way Jin’s laugh had echoed through the empty park like bells, the way Jin had rested gloved fingertips on the underside of Kame’s chin to make Kame stare him in the eyes.

Kame can remember the way Jin’s arm had felt heavy across his shoulder, the way Jin’s wool coat had smelled of pines and cigarettes, and the way Jin’s breath, when he exhaled, blowing across Kame’s fluttering eyelashes, had smelled of citrusy gum.

Kame can remember the way Jin’s fingers had folded around his own, pulling Kame’s hand into his own pocket as Kame had shivered in the wind’s assault. “Hey,” Jin had whispered. “Isn’t it a good thing I’m here to warm you up?” A smile had played around the corners of his mouth, and Kame had stared at the way Jin’s mole had disappeared into the crinkles around his eyes when that smile had spread across his face into a wide grin. 

Kame remembers a night in a very different December, when Jin had kissed him, hot breath in cool snow, and asked Kame to come with him.

And now, as Kame sinks to his knees, bare skin touching frozen glass through those _artfully torn holes_ in his expensive jeans, Kame thinks he might like to fall back into that moment, and let it consume him.

 

*

 

Kame sleeps with the light on, because when the lights are off, he always remembers how much Jin had been afraid of losing himself in the dark.

On quiet nights, Kame wonders if he does it so that when Jin comes back, Kame wants Jin to know Kame won’t let him get lost again.

 

*

“Don’t touch me,” Jin says. “Not in front of other people.”

“What?” Kame says, because Jin’s only talking to Kame, not to Nakamaru who shoves him across the stage, or to Koki who tackles him with giant bear hugs. He’s not talking to Ueda who leans back against him, or to Junno, who bumps into him and giggles as they bounce around stage. 

Kame contemplates the warmth of Jin’s palm in his own, bowing in front of a crowd so excited to see them all together again. A symbol of unity in a band disjointed. 

“Why me?” Kame asks, and even as he says it, he knows. _Akakame_ always hurt Jin more than it hurt Kame. For all that Jin’s always loved what he does, and pretends he doesn’t care what people say, Jin’s the softest of them all. 

“Everyone thinks,” Jin pulls on the brim of his hat. “Everyone thinks we’re gay together.”

“So?” Kame says. “We’re not. Who cares what they think?” Kame stretches his neck, but he doesn’t take his eyes off Jin. 

“I care,” Jin says. “I really, really care.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re _not_ ,” Jin hisses, and there’s something in his gaze that’s begging Kame to understand. Then it’s gone, and there’s only that locked away look in Jin’s eyes, shadowed beneath Jin’s dark fedora, and Kame can’t read Jin at all, even as Jin’s emotions leak out of Jin’s skin and cause goosebumps to rise on Kame’s forearms.

“Alright,” Kame whispers, and Jin is so damn quiet.

 

*

 

“Excellently done, Kame,” Meisa says as she watches the tailor work. “I knew I could count on you.”

“Anything for you, Sister Angela,” Kame says in his cheerful Kousaku voice, and when Meisa looks over at him, he bats his eyelashes playfully. 

“The suits are gorgeous. They look classy and expensive. I knew you’d do better than Yuichi.”

“Of course I would,” Kame says. “I love Nakamaru like a brother, but the day I let him dress me for a formal event is the day I admit myself to an insane asylum.”

“There’s nothing wrong with Yuichi’s fashion sense for everyday life,” Meisa says. “I think the argyle’s kind of hot.”

“Wow,” Kame says. “I guess that’s love.”

Meisa smirks at him. “But there will be not argyle on the groomsmen at my wedding.”

“That’s my girl,” Kame says with a grin, and Meisa laughs so hard she throws her head back. 

Meisa and Kame have been friends for years, ever since they worked on _One Pound_ together. Kame likes Meisa, because she’s no-nonsense and always has something smartass to say, and she doesn’t put up with anyone’s mess. Kame likes that in anyone, but in Meisa it comes in a particularly kind package. 

When she’d finally met Nakamaru four years ago at Kame’s birthday party, he’d never expected them to end up together, but in a lot of ways it makes sense. Kame also doesn’t really have many doubts about who tops in bed, either, but as much as he loves Nakamaru, he doesn’t really want to imagine his buttoned up friend getting whipped in the bedroom as much as he whipped out of it. 

When Junno comes out of the dressing room, the tailor trailing behind him muttering about letting out the hem of the trousers, Meisa lets out a low whistle. “Kame, you want to pick out my bridesmaids’ dresses too? Maki’s a little hopeless with it.”

“I think we’d better leave that to her,” Kame says. “She’s already upset with me about, you know, introducing you to Nakamaru.”

“Mm,” Meisa says. “I suppose you’re right.” Meisa tosses her long hair behind her, and grins shark-like at Kame. “There’s only you left, now, Kame.”

“Not interested,” Kame says firmly. “I barely have time for both my family and my professional obligations. Squeezing in friends is a challenge. You want me to add a relationship to that?”

“You’re pushing forty, Kame. You’re old enough that you should start figuring out what you really want, and young enough that you can still reach out with both hands and grab it.”

“Why’s everyone on my case about this lately?” Kame asks. “Do I seem miserable?”

“No,” Meisa says. “You don’t.” She reaches into her handbag and grabs her phone, lacquered nails tapping across the touchscreen. “But Kame, all of us remember what you were like, you know, when you had…”

“I never had anything,” Kame says. 

“You used to shine just a little bit brighter, Kame. Maybe we all just remember that.” Meisa’s studiously looking at her phone, in a way that Kame knows is because she doesn’t want to look directly at him. Meisa’s never been the type for a heart to heart. She’s more of the type to give you a stern talking to when you’re being silly or stubborn, and Kame wonders if Nakamaru put her up to this. “It’s like Akanishi took a piece of you with him when he left,” Meisa says, and then she looks up suddenly. 

“He did,” Kame admits, and he’s never admitted it before, not aloud. Meisa stares at him with wide eyes, and Kame lifts his hand up and presses it against his chest, on the right side, and wonders where his heart is now.

 

*

 

Some things never change. The world shifts and turns and spins around them, but that thing never, ever changes, constant and steady.

That’s Kame’s love for Jin. Time marches forward and Jin moves further away and comes closer again, and everything else molds and fits in the spaces he creates.

But Kame has always loved Jin, even before he knew that’s what it was. And some things never change.

 

*

 

The ninth postcard is from Alaska. There’s the profile of an Inuit on the front, strong nose in profile, warm looking hood made out of some sort of animal pelt hiding most of the rest of the face. 

It reminds Kame of a winter when he was seventeen, before things had gotten complicated. It reminds Kame of playing in the snow, Jin’s stupid wheezing laugh ringing in the air, and then a cup of warm tea in his hands, making his fingers tingle as his heart does the same from a different sort of warmth.

_Winter’s so cold here,_ is written, and Kame knows Jin’s not talking about the weather.

 

*

 

They all know the signs now. The way Jin stops answering even direct questions, the way his eyes glaze over and he fades out. 

It confuses the interviewers, too. Jin tries to pull himself up and into the conversation, and Kame can visibly see the struggle, but Jin just stumbles over his words and fumbles through life when he’s like this, and they all try to draw attention away from him and pick up the slack, but it’s hard. It’s hard because the interviewers notice, and the fans notice, and their anger just translates into Jin getting even quieter, even more withdrawn. 

When Jin doesn’t show up for rehearsal, Kame knows Jin’s at the bottom of a valley. Kame doesn’t bother to knock on Jin’s door. He knows where the spare key is—Jin keeps it in the same place his mother keeps it, taped to the underside of his door-buzzer, because Jin has a habit of forgetting his keys and forgetting where the spare is, too, if he makes the hiding place more complicated. Kame peels it off, vowing to remember to return it on his way out.

Jin’s apartment is dark. Kame slides the key into his pocket, and walks forward. The edge of his toe pushes at a glass bottle, and Kame stops, and gropes along the wall for the light switch he knows is there. The light flickers on, and there are a few beer bottles littering the floor, like Jin tried to get drunk and gave up.

Kame used to come here more than he does now. He remembers when Jin moved into this place, sweating and flushed after carrying everything up. Jin had collapsed on the floor, stomach heaving up and down, and Kame had stood with his hands on his hips, staring down at Jin with a look. “Fine, fine, I’ll start unpacking,” Jin says, and Yamapi had made a whip-cracking sound as he’d set the box down. “What’s your hurry?”

“The sooner you unpack, the more sure I’ll be you aren’t going to disappear on me again,” Kame had said, and Jin had looked up at him, lips parted in surprise, before that unfathomable look had crept back into his eyes. 

Now, that spot where Jin had flopped out spread eagle is taken by an expensive coffee table covered in magazines about all sorts of random things, like confectionary baking and model-robot creation, that Kame’s eighty percent sure Jin will never read. There’s also a fitness magazine, but that’s probably Yamapi’s, who had called Kame earlier and said he had no idea what to do with Jin.

Jin’s bedroom isn’t a mess, by Jin-standards. There are socks all over the floor, and piles and piles of similar looking white and black t-shirts on the chairs, but there are no coffee mugs with months-old residue in them and there are no half-consumed bottles of Gatorade, either. At least, if there are, Kame can’t make them out with only the light of the hallway to illuminate the room. He walks in and closes the door behind him, plunging them both into darkness.

“Hi,” Kame whispers, and Jin doesn’t respond. Kame does hear him move though, and when he squints, he notices that Jin’s only lying on one side of his bed. 

Kame slips onto the other side, and then Jin is close, bare chest pressed to Kame’s side, lips grazing Kame’s clothed shoulder. “Hi,” Jin mumbles, and Kame sighs in relief. Jin’s breath smells of beer, and Kame can smell it on the exhale.

“We have an interview tomorrow,” Kame says, and Jin’s hand wraps around Kame’s bicep.

“I know,” Jin says. “I’ll be there.” Jin’s hair falls long and wild in his face. “Kame, I’m so tired.”

“I know,” Kame says, and he tentatively reaches for Jin’s hair, and Jin leans into the touch, the way he always does when it’s perfectly dark and Jin’s warm from the heat of the blankets, his drowsy limbs heavy and soft as they press against Kame for comfort. 

“Stay,” Jin says, and of course Kame will stay. “Even if you don’t want to.”

Kame always stays, just like Jin always leaves, satellites orbiting in opposite directions.

 

*

 

Akihisa stumbles toward a stranger’s puppy, and Kame laughingly grabs him before he can get to close. “That’s not Ieyasu, Akihisa. Be careful,” Kame says, and Yamapi looks up from his mobile to look at the little boy.

“Akihisa, don’t get hurt or your mother will have my head,” Yamapi says, and Kame laughs as Akihisa presses his face against Kame’s leg.

“How’d you get stuck with babysitting duty, again?” Kame asks. He and Yamapi had agreed to meet early last week, because it has been awhile since they’ve seen each other. When Yamapi had shown up with Akihisa in tow, Kame had been surprised but not displeased. Akihisa is starting to look like Yamapi, a little, and Kame sometimes wonders what keeps Yamapi from settling down himself and having his own kids.

“Rina’s been looking so tired lately that I volunteered,” Yamapi replies. “Plus, I knew you wouldn’t mind.” The street gets narrow in the press of people, and Kame checks to make sure his sunglasses are still in place as the crowd gets thicker. Yamapi does the same, settling his nephew securely against his chest ad he uses his left hand to tug his hat lower on his brow.

“I don’t,” Kame says.

“Where we headed?” Yamapi asks. “By the way, I got interviewed for your documentary.”

“Oh really?” Kame asks. He’d known they were going to do additional interviews with other people about their documentary, but as always with Johnny’s production, Kame has no idea who or when or why. “What did they ask?”

“About being Juniors together. All sorts of weird stuff. And about Shuuji to Akira.”

“Really?” Kame asks. “Well, I hope it wasn’t too big of a bother.”

“Naw, I just told them I thought you were looking fat and old these days, and—“

“Shut up if you value your life,” Kame says. “I’ve spent too much time with idols lately.” Kame leads them off the main road onto a side street, and breathes a sigh of relief as the crowd gets thinner. The Ginza area is always trouble to brave, but Kame likes too many things here to avoid it. “Fellow idols know all the right buttons to push.”

“This is Jin’s favorite restaurant,” Yamapi says, hefting his nephew up to his hip, large hand pressed to the base of the little boy’s back. Akihisa smiles, and giggles, and Kame grins at the small boy.

“Was,” Kame says. “Was Jin’s favorite restaurant.” It sounds biting, but Kame doesn’t mean it that way. “Who knows what he likes these days.”

“Probably the same shit,” Yamapi says. “I wonder what he’s doing now. I wish he’d call, or write, or something. Instead of this silence.” Yamapi adjusts his hold on Akihisa. “At least he sends you postcards. And his mom messages me sometimes that Jin’s informed her he’s still alive.”

“The postcards,” Kame says. “Jin’s pleasant way of reminding us all that he’s out exploring the world and can’t bother to tell us he’s okay.”

“Isn’t that what they are, though?” Yamapi says with a tiny smile. “Jin’s way of telling you he ‘s okay?” Yamapi sighs. “Jin’s way of telling you he’s thinking about you?”

“Not you, too,” Kame says with a groan. “I swear, Jin and I…”

“All I’m saying,” Yamapi tells Kame, “is that Jin was my best friend, and I don’t get postcards. Neither do Ryo-chan or Yuu.” Yamapi’s smile grows a little larger. “Whatever’s between you too, it transcends friendship. It’s almost like you’re magnets, or like some invisible force just won’t let you drift apart.”

“Jin sure gave it his best shot,” Kame says and Yamapi scratches the back of his neck with his free hand, squinting his eyes at Kame. Age hasn’t diminished the sharpness of Yamapi’s cheekbones, and Yamapi’s got a weird perm for his movie, too. 

“Kame,” Yamapi says. “Jin… he wasn’t okay. We all pretended that he was, because it was easier to ignore the obvious signs, but Jin wasn’t okay. A million different things were eating him up inside, and he wasn’t getting better with time, he was falling apart.” Yamapi nods at the hostess as she gestures them to follow her lead as she leads him through the maze of tables to the more isolated booths in the back. Two of Japan’s top movie stars might draw more attention to this smaller restaurant, but Kame and Yamapi are loyal customers, and the staff is always willing to help them hide away. “I just hope he found the help he needed. Or something.”

“I know,” Kame says, and his voice is low and rough and entirely wrong, and Yamapi is just looking at him. Akihisa’s happy laughs drag Kame’s vision down to the boy, whose big fluffy hair reminds him of Jin. “It doesn’t make it hurt less, not hearing from him. Wondering everyday if he’s okay, if he’s happy. If he’s hiding away in hotel rooms for days on end with the lights out.”

“Yeah,” Yamapi says. “And don’t you doubt I’m going to punch him in the face when he gets here for the wedding next week, for making me worried. Straight in the face.”

“No you’re not,” Kame says. “Oh my goodness, he would look awful in the wedding photos if you did that.”

“I’m going to do it,” Yamapi says with a laugh. “Just you wait.”

“I am waiting,” Kame says. “I’ve been waiting for years for Jin to come back. Maybe I ought to punch him in the face too.”

It’s easier to think of Jin finally coming home as more of a reality than a dream when he’s talking about it with Yamapi, whose hair Akihisa is enjoying thoroughly as Kame and Yamapi wait for a server. 

“You won’t,” Yamapi says, and Yamapi’s smile stretches across his whole face, and maybe it’s better if they’re all waiting together. “You save your face-punching for taxi-drivers.”

“Haha,” Kame says, deadpan. 

“It’s been more than a decade and that’s still the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever done.”

Kame looks down at the menu. That’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever been _caught_ doing, he wants to correct, but then he’d have to explain about the time he and Jin broke into--

“I wonder if Jin ever thinks about us,” Kame says. 

“Of course he does,” Yamapi says. “Jin’s got so much love in his heart but he’s shit at expressing it.” Yamapi runs his finger back up the menu. “Maybe that makes the postcards, like, the Jin version of sonnets.”

Kame snorts, and Akihisa reaches across the table and upends the salt.   
Yamapi doesn’t say anything when Kame orders the Chicken Parmesan, which is what Jin always used to order. But he does offer Kame a tiny smile. 

 

*

 

Jin won’t admit anything is wrong, not to his friends, not to his family. Certainly not to Kame. 

Kame’s pretty sure that sometimes Jin won’t even admit it to himself. 

The cameras catch all of Jin’s worst moments, and Kame would like to protect him. But no amount of diverting attention can hide the fact that Jin’s buried so deep inside himself that he’s barely interacting with the world. 

“He’s just exhausted,” Kame says, and Koki slugs Jin in the arm, and Jin blinks slowly and laconically. “He’s just been working too hard.”

“Right,” the host says, and Kame can tell she doesn’t believe them. Still, she can’t say anything, it’s not professional. 

Later, Jin apologizes, softly and quietly, and it’s nothing, _nothing_ like the boy who never said sorry unless it was tickled out of him, gleeful laughter and innocent smiles.

But Kame still knows him, even as Jin is trying to push Kame away, even as Jin turns to Yamapi and Nishikido for companionship for reasons Kame still doesn’t really understand. 

It’s not like they fought, or that Kame’s forgotten about Jin, or anything like that. It’s just that Jin’s pulled himself light years away from Kame, and Kame can only find him when Jin reaches a hand out of the dark and grabs a hold on Kame’s wrist. 

“You ever coming back?” Kame asks, and Jin doesn’t answer, just looks at him with impassive eyes that chill Kame to his bones. 

There is no sun, and Kame’s spinning out of orbit.

“What did I do?” Kame asks helplessly, and Jin swallows.

“It’s not your fault,” Jin says. “It’s not you, it’s me.”

“Not funny,” Kame says pointedly, and Jin winces.

“Who’s laughing?” Jin pulls his fedora down lower so Kame can’t see more than the shadow it casts over the upper part of his face. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Let me help you,” Kame says, and then remembers the way Jin had said _“especially not you”_. “Or you family. Or Yamapi. Or Nishikido. Or Shirota. Anyone, damnit, Jin.”

“I’m just selfish,” Jin says. “And I’m trying not to be.” His words are vague. “I want it all, but the price for any of it is too high.”

“What?” Kame says, and Jin smiles. There’s no joy in it. Kame can’t see his teeth, or his tongue flattening and filling in the bottom of his mouth. Things Jin’s always done when he’s happy. 

Jin isn’t happy. “It’s dark,” Jin says, and Kame doesn’t have a response for that, because it’s the middle of the day, and they’re standing outside on a sidewalk in front of the television studio and it’s a bright day.

Strangely, Kame can’t feel the sun on him either. But later that evening, when Kame’s dressed in his pajamas and the gel is washed from his hair and his skin scrubbed clean of foundation, he finds a faint sunburn on the back of his neck.

 

*

 

The sun is orbited by four planets, four gas-giants, two known dwarf planets, and millions and millions of meteors, asteroids and comets, moving at different speeds and in different directions and at different distances.

Kame thinks love is like the sun, and of the countless things circling it- not close enough to touch but forever trapped in it’s pull, one of them is Kame’s lost and independently beating heart.

 

*

 

“You’ve got a black eye,” is the first thing Kame says to Jin in seven years, after answering the door, because Jin does. It’s swollen and puffy and purple, and Jin’s lip is split too. “Come inside,” is the second thing he says, because Kame worries Jin will look like a thug in Nakamaru’s wedding pictures and he doesn’t want to remember Jin like that when Jin inevitably disappears again.

“Yeah,” Jin says, as he slips out of his sneakers and plods into the hallway like he belongs there. “Yamapi punched me in the face.” Jin reaches up and touches his lip, and then he winces. “Twice. And then he called me a selfish asshole who didn’t deserve any friends.” Jin uses one finger to scratch at his hair, like he used to do when it was done just-so, solidified with hairspray and Jin’s careful crafting. Now it’s a mess, but Kame guesses old habits die hard. “Can I have some water?”

Kame nods. “He said he was going to do that. And then what happened?” Kame asks, walking toward the kitchen. “You didn’t lose any teeth, did you?”

“He hugged me and told me I was really stupid and that he missed me like hell,” Jin says. “I missed him like hell too.” Jin is following him into the flat, close to Kame’s back, like he used to do before, and Kame can hear Jin’s footsteps, always heavier than Kame’s own, so loudly in his ears. “Then he told me I’d better come see you next or he was going to punch me so hard my face would come out the back of my head.”

“Oh?” Kame says, and then it hits him, all of a sudden, that Jin is here, in his apartment, right now, and it’s been seven years and Kame’s been holding his breath, somehow, and he’s dizzy with all the oxygen flooding his lungs at last. Kame feels his knees buckle, and he wonders if he’ll fall.

But warm hands grip at his upper arms and Jin is pulling Kame into his arms. “The water can wait,” Jin says, and Jin’s breath smells like mint, of course it does, and his skin is hot, and their knees are banging into each other because Jin’s got Kame in an embrace that’s more like a chokehold. And, Kame thinks, none of that matters, because Kame feels, somehow, like he’s waking up. 

“We have to put ice on your eye,” Kame mumbles into Jin’s shoulder, and Jin laughs, a little shakily.

“Kame, it’ll be okay for another minute or so. The water can wait too.” Jin seems caught between anxiousness and amusement.

“But the photos,” Kame says, and Jin sighs into Kame’s hair, and Kame can feel every muscle in Jin’s body as they shift against his own. “You’re not allowed to ruin all those memories.”

“Don’t worry,” Jin says. “Don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry,” Kame repeats fuzzily. “Jin.”

“I wanted to come see you first,” Jin says, and the words fall on Kame like the sun’s rays, warm and soft, and Kame’s heart is hammering against his ribs. He feels sick. “But I was too scared.”

Kame doesn’t know what to say to that. A part of him feels like he’s dreaming, but it’s too vivid. It’s too much.

Kame tries to pull back, and Jin can tell, and he immediately drops his arms, stepping back like he’s been burned. “Sorry,” Jin says. “I shouldn’t have…” _touched you like that._ is left unsaid, but Kame hears it. Of course he does.

Years and years will pass, and Kame will still know the things Jin thinks it’s impossible to say. 

Kame doesn’t know what to do, or what to say. Kame’s been wanting to see Jin for so long, and he’s planned all these things that he needs to get off his chest, but in the moment, all he can do is stare. Jin seems to be doing the same thing, and they’re not touching at all now but there’s still the lingering tingle of their embrace, and it’s burning Kame up inside.

Jin, Kame thinks, is burning up inside, too.

Years and years will pass and Kame and Jin will still be connected in all these terrible, bruising ways.

“It’s fine,” Kame says, and he doesn’t know what he’s saying is fine, because nothing is fine. Jin knows that, too, Kame can see the knowledge in Jin’s eyes when he meets them full-on for the first time. “I’m going to get something for your eye.”

“Okay,” Jin says, and there’s something hopeful in Jin’s eyes that Kame can’t begin to contemplate. Kame feels like he standing on thin ice, and he’ll slip and fall if he moves too fast. “And the water, if you don’t mind.”

Kame wets his lips, and Jin is looking at him so carefully that Kame wonders if Jin thinks he’ll disappear. 

Kame thinks that’s ironic. “I’m not going anywhere, Akanishi,” Kame says, as he steps backward through the entryway to the kitchen. “It’s not me who’s the flight risk.”

Jin doesn’t flinch. “I know,” Jin says, and he shoves his hands deep in his pockets, and his baggy gray t-shirt bunches against his stomach, because it’s trapped between his arms and his side.

Jin is thirty-nine and he looks almost exactly the same.

Kame grabs a bottle of sparkling water from the refrigerator, because that’s the kind Jin likes, and the ice-tray from the freezer, he sets it down on the counter. Jin is near; Kame can feel him, but Kame wills his shaking hands to still, and reaches into the cabinet for a Ziploc, the kind he puts his fruit in, in the morning, when he’s running late to filming. He cracks the ice, twisting the tray in his hands, and dumps the ice carelessly on the counter. He picks up the cubes one by one and drops them into the baggy, and zips it closed. 

When he turns around, Jin is standing there, and Kame can’t read the expression on his face, not even a little.

But Kame looks at Jin’s bruised eye and offers him the bag of ice cubes, and Jin takes it, and the brush of their fingers makes Jin gasp.

At least, Kame thinks, he’s not the only one whose feelings are rushing through him. Maybe Jin feels like Kame feels: like everything is moving around him and he’s standing perfectly still in the midst of it. 

“Put it on your eye,” Kame says, and the words stick to the edges of his throat and tongue, like peanut butter, and he forces them out.

Jin smiles nervously, and Kame’s stomach flops. It’s been seven years, and Jin can still do this to him.

“Okay,” Jin says, and he presses it to his face. He winces at the cool, and Kame offers him the water bottle, and Jin looks surprised that it’s his favorite brand, or that Kame remembers he likes the sparkling kind.

“Like I could have forgotten,” Kame murmurs, and Jin flushes, but it’s not a… it’s not a bad flush. It’s more like Jin is pleased, and unsure, and all of those things that Jin has always been.

Jin is thirty-nine and he acts almost exactly the same.

Almost.

It’s almost, because Jin takes a drink of his sparkling water and pulls the ice away from his eyes, and there’s no lock. Jin is looking at Kame, and Kame can see all the way through.

“Can we talk?” Jin asks, and Kame numbly shakes his head.

“Not tonight,” Kame says, and Jin reaches forward, catching a piece of Kame’s hair between his fingers. 

“It’s long,” Jin offers. “I like when it’s black.”

“You do?” Kame says, and there’s a moment where Kame forgets that this Jin is seven years older and hopefully seven years wiser.

“Yeah,” Jin says.

Kame walks into the living room and Jin follows. Kame collapses down on the sofa, but Jin doesn’t follow this time. Jin is paused with his back to Kame, and Kame takes a moment to breathe in. The air has changed. Maybe, Kame thinks, it’s a little sweeter.

“This map,” Jin says, and Kame lets his eyes fall closed, leaning his head back on the sofa. “It’s me?”

“Yes,” Kame says. “And no.”

“It’s one or the other, isn’t it?” Jin asks, and Kame feels the couch sink as Jin sits down on the opposite side. “Yes or no.”

Kame rolls his head away from Jin, who has left a lot of space between them, but not enough, Kame thinks, because Kame is hot like he’s under the blazing summer sun. It’s late, Kame thinks, and a long time from sunrise. He opens his eyes and studies the map, the map he presses a new pushpin in with every postcard with fingers that no longer shake. “Yes. And no.”

Jin laughs, and it’s enough to get Kame to turn toward him hesitantly. Jin’s got the ice pressed to his eye, but the curl up his lips is vibrant to Kame’s hungry eyes. “You never used to be enigmatic with me, Kame,” Jin says, and Kame wants to lean forward and rest his hand on Jin’s knee. Jin’s jeans are torn there, revealing a slice of tanned skin, and a scab that wasn’t there before. 

“It’s been a long time,” Kame says, and Jin frowns. 

“That reminds me,” Jin says, and he reaches into the pocket of his sweatshirt, pulling out a square of paper. “This is for you.”

Kame takes it from him. It’s not paper at all. It’s a postcard. On the front of it is Odawara Castle, with its white walls and grey-shingled roofs, standing atop its stone foundation. `Japan,` it says, and Kame’s eyes memorize every millimeter of it, even though it’s a picture he’s seen plenty of times before. It’s a place he’s been.

He and Jin had gone there together once, when they were still kids, and Jin had clung to Kame as their guide had told scary ghost stories that made Jin act more like they were in a haunted house than in a national landmark. Kame hadn’t minded.

_Japan,_ Kame thinks, and then he looks over at Jin. Jin has fallen asleep, curled up into a small ball, his head resting on the arm of the sofa. He looks so young, the way his hair falls into his face, the back of his left hand pressed against his cheek and his mouth slack. The ice rests idly in his right hand, lax against the back cushion, and Kame can’t help the hysterical laughter that bubble up inside of him. He pulls his knees up and presses his face into them, resting his forehead against his kneecaps and taking deep breaths. 

Jin is asleep on Kame’s couch, and Kame’s not allowed to burn to dust. 

Kame stands, holding the postcard with both hands. He walks over to the table near his _genkan_ and grabs the pushpins. He finds a red one, red like the bright circle in the center of the Japanese flag, representing the rising sun, and walks over to the map. Japan is easy to find, and Kame presses the pin in, and his chest is so tight. In a way, Kame thinks, it’s like his heart has come home.

He walks into his bedroom and grabs the extra blanket he keeps at the end of his bed, and one of his pillows, and returns out to the living room. Jin has sprawled, legs stretching the length of the sofa, and Jin has cutely turned his face into his sweatshirt for warmth. 

Kame covers him in the blanket, and then drops to his knees. He carefully lifts Jin’s head with his right hand. Jin’s hair is as soft and fluffy as it looks, Kame thinks. It still feels like a cloud between Kame’s fingers. Kame slides the pillow under Jin’s head, and Jin smiles contentedly, and Kame aches and aches. 

“Goodnight, Jin,” Kame whispers, and presses the tiniest of kisses to Jin’s forehead.

And yes, Kame thinks, it is exactly like his heart has come home.

 

*

 

“What’s this for?” Kame asks, holding the folded map carefully in his hands. Nakamaru takes it back from him, tearing the plastic and pulling the map out, unfolding it. It’s huge, Kame thinks. It’s two meters long, and it takes both of them to hold it.

“It’s a map of the world,” Nakamaru says. “The whole world.”

“I know that,” Kame says. “But why are you giving it to me?”

“Because you’re lost,” Nakamaru says. “You’ve been lost for five years, and when people are lost, you give them directions.” 

“I’m lost?” Kame says, and he looks down on the oceans and the continents unfolded between them with a sense of desperation.

“Yes,” Nakamaru says. “Or at least your heart is. And I can’t give you directions,” Nakamaru brushes one hand, the hand not holding the thick paper, through his short hair, eyebrows knitted together in frustration. “So I’m giving you a map.”

“What am I supposed to do with this?” Kame asks, and there’s some kind of choked laughter bubbling in his throat. It’s always worse this time of year. This is when he left. This is when he gave everything up. This is when Kame didn’t go with him, or drag him back.

Nakamaru roots through his pocket, pulling out a packet of multicolor thumbtacks, and wiggles them in the air. “For the postcards,” Nakamaru says. “That way, even if you can’t find your heart, you can keep track of where it’s been.” Nakamaru sighs. “Ueda thinks I’m enabling you.”

Kame looks at Nakamaru, who’s looking back at him firmly, without judgment or hesitation. Just looking at him, silent and supportive. 

And maybe it’s because Kame holds himself together three-hundred-and-sixty-four days a year, and is mostly happy three-hundred-and-sixty-four days a year, and puts one foot in front of the other three-hundred-and-sixty-four days a year… Maybe it’s because of that that there’s one day a year he wants, more than anything, to see Jin sitting across the room from him, smoking a cigarette, legs crossed at the knee in contrast to his oversized jeans, hair tangled about his shoulders and the beginnings of a mustache on his upper lip. Or like he looked when Kame last saw him, resolute and warm and fierce against Kame’s mouth, cloaked in wool and smelling of mint and desperation and longing. 

A memory of a kiss, a second kiss, one that burns in his memory brighter than it should; brighter than Kame wants it to. 

_One day this year_ , Kame thinks, as his hands tremble, the map shaking between them. _One day this year I can stupid like this._

Kame and Nakamaru hang the map up on the wall on his living room. Kame takes down two very expensive art prints to make the room, but he knows another place he can put them, where his mother won’t make faces at the nude female forms depicted, and where Ryo won’t leer. 

Kame goes upstairs and grabs the shoebox from under his bed as Nakamaru smoothes the map on the wall, trying to press out the wrinkles with the flat of his palm. He comes back downstairs with the box clutched to his chest.

Kame presses the pins into wall, twelve of them, enjoying the resistance as the sharp metal end sinks into his unmarred walls. He’ll fix them later, or maybe he won’t.

A map of his heart, Kame thinks, goes from China to Greece to Alaska to Prague. Kame’s heart’s been all around the world, and each postcard is like a satellite signal back home, letting Kame know it’s still beating out there, somewhere.

“I don’t know why I can’t let go,” Kame says, and Nakamaru stands next to him, pushing against Kame with his shoulder. He reaches forward, to the box of postcards that Kame brought down, and pulls out the one on top. China. The first one.

“You’re the only one who gets these,” Nakamaru says, holding one up. “Not Shirota, not Yamashita, not Nishikido or any of them. Probably not his American friends, either. Just you. And only Jin’s parents know where he is, you know?” Nakamaru drops the card back in the box and surveys the map. “Seems to me he can’t let go either.”

“But he’s the one that left,” Kame says. “And I’m too smart, too practical, and too put-together to sit around and wait for him to come back.”

“The human heart is an interesting thing,” Nakamaru says. “We can tell it things, over and over and over again, and...” Nakamaru trails off, and he doesn’t really need to continue. “Whatever Jin was… _is_ to you… Whatever you guys are to each other, it’s always been something neither of you can deny, no matter how hard you try.”

“ _Kizuna,_ ” Kame says, and he thinks about holding Jin against his chest in the dark as Jin tries to wish himself away.

 

*

 

The rehearsal room is quiet, and Kame feels a tension build in the room. It’s a slow burn, like an orchestral piece making a protracted crescendo, and everyone can feel it. 

When they break for water, Kame leans back against the mirrors, knowing he’s smudging them but relishing the cool surface anyway. His hair is sticky with sweat, clinging to his neck and ears. His eyes are closed, but he knows when Jin stops in front of him, letting his eyes slowly open to take in Jin’s frustrated face. 

The others are gone, and it’s just Jin and Kame alone in the rehearsal room, surrounded by mirrors and that steady hum of unresolved business.

“You told Johnny,” Jin spits, and his arms are wrapped around his torso like a shield.

“I’m really worried about you, Jin,” Kame says, and he tries to put it all into his voice. All of the fear and all of the helplessness. All of the way he feels when Jin sinks into himself and no one can find him for days. “I don’t know what else to do. I think you need _help_ or something, and I can’t. I’m not enough.”

Jin’s eyes are cold, but he’s here. All of him is here and he’s looking at Kame like he doesn’t even know him. “I trusted you,” Jin says, and Kame shivers, because _oh God no_ , this was never about trust, this was about Kame watching Jin slip through his fingers.

Kame reaches out toward Jin and Jin steps back, and now his eyes are like diamonds, hard and cool, reflecting the light in the rehearsal room, ugly and yellow and florescent. “Jin, I wasn’t trying to betray you, I just…”

“Do you know what’s going to happen?” Jin asks, and there’s an edge to his voice, that borders on hysteria. “Because I don’t. I don’t know. I might lose my solo concerts.”

“Jin,” and Kame moves forward, grabbing Jin and pulling him close. Jin struggles, but Kame’s stronger than Jin now, and Jin’s also not fighting very hard. 

“Let go of me,” Jin hisses, and his nails claw at Kame’s biceps, and Kame just lets him, the thin gashes only stinging a little as Jin gives in before he ever really starts. 

“No,” Kame says. “I won’t let you lock me out.”

Jin lets his head fall into the curve of Kame’s neck, nose cold on Kame’s skin. Kame ventures a hand up Jin’s back, a soothing stroke, and Jin shudders, releasing a harsh breath into the hollow where Kame’s shoulder becomes his clavicle. “It’ll be okay.”

“It hasn’t begin okay for a while,” Jin says. “Why can’t I do this?”

“Jin,” Kame mutters again, and it’s just Jin’s name, but they both know that it’s all Kame can offer. They both know that it isn’t enough.

“You weren’t supposed to talk about it,” Jin whispers, and it tickles his collarbone. Jin’s hair, swept back in an overly gelled ponytail, ends curled elaborately, is thick between Kame’s fingers as he destroys the style with gentle tugs, but Jin doesn’t seem to mind, body still trembling as Kame holds him close. “When you talk about it, it’s real.”

Their hearts beat in tandem.

“I know,” Kame says. “But I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Not this,” Jin says. “Not this.” And Jin pulls away from him, and looks at him. Kame can see Jin’s fire in his eyes, flickering bright still. 

“I’m sorry,” Kame says, and remembers the way Jin’s fingertips feel so cold when they’re lying side bye side in the pitch black, curtains drawn and Jin’s shallow breathing as he grasps at being awake. 

“Me too,” Jin says. “I’m sorry, too.” Jin is still staring. 

“I’ll always be here, Jin, if you ask me to be.”

“It’s funny,” Jin says. “Because you’re the only person who can help, but I can’t bring myself to let you.”

Then Jin is gone, and Kame can only stare at the door, smelling mint and sweat mingling in the air like a calling card, and feeling a soul rattling cold seep into his bones. 

 

*

 

_The giant trees are bending_  
Their bare boughs weighed with snow ;  
The storm is fast descending,  
And yet I cannot go. 

\--The Night is Darkening Around Me, Emily Bronte

 

*

 

Kame wakes up in the morning with a nagging sense that he has to be somewhere. That sense is usually right, so Kame gets quickly out of bed and gets ready for the day, sighing at how greasy his hair feels and vowing to wash it twice tonight to make up for his negligence. He finally picks up his phone, and summons his appointment book, which tells him that, yes, he has to meet the others at Ueda’s flat in forty-five minutes to rehearse for their singing bit in the documentary. 

He isn’t expecting to see Jin still curled up in sleep on his couch, the blanket Kame had draped over him last night slipping off his shoulders, Jin’s lips parted in peaceful sleep, and hair stark against Kame’s white pillow. His eye is a mess, all purples and blues that Kame hopes fade to greens that are more easily covered with foundation. 

Last night comes back to Kame in a rush, and he stops, and he just stares at Jin, who stirs in his sleep. His eyes flutter open, and he takes in Kame with a drowsy gaze. “You’re dressed.” Kame only makes out the words because he’s practiced. He’s been interpreting Jin’s unintelligible sleep talk for far more than half his life. 

“I have things to do,” Kame says, and his voice comes out crackling, like it always does in the morning before he’s had caffeine. “Do you want some coffee?”

“Why haven’t you screamed at me?” Jin asks, his words coming out bleary and confused. “Told me how selfish I am, or how much you hate me, or how much you can’t forgive me?”

Kame’s not ready to figure out those answers for himself, let alone give them to Jin. He needs time to process, and it’s funny, Kame thinks, that he’s had all the time in the world and now everything feels like it’s moving too fast.

“I don’t hate you,” Kame says. “Have I ever hated you?” Kame wipes his hands on his jeans, and looks over toward the clock. “Do you want some coffee?”

“Where do you have to go?” Jin queries, and Kame decides to take that as a yes, and assume Jin does want coffee, because it takes twenty minutes to get to Ueda’s flat, and that means Kame’s only got fifteen before he has to leave. He walks into the kitchen, zipping the fly to his jeans as he walks.

“Tatsuya’s,” Kame replies loudly, putting the whole coffee beans into the grinder. The whirring sound must cover the creaks of Jin getting up and stretching in the living room, because Kame isn’t expecting to see Jin standing next to him, and it startles him. He recovers quickly, though, and dumps the coffee grounds into the coffee maker, adding water to the machine, and then leans across the counter. “We’ve got to sing.”

“I thought you didn’t sing anymore,” Jin says, and then his eyes dart off to the side. “I mean, I thought KAT-TUN had retired.”

“We have,” Kame says. “But we’re singing together for a documentary.”

“A documentary?” Jin asks, and Kame nods, walking past Jin to retrieve two mugs from the cabinet.

“About KAT-TUN,” Kame says. “We’re going to sing together as a surprise bonus.”

“Oh,” Jin says, and Kame doesn’t look up at him. “That’s nice.”

“It is,” Kame says. “How long are you staying?”

“Nine days,” Jin says. “Haven’t bought my ticket back yet, but nine days.

“Nine days,” Kame says dully. Nine days to catch up on seven years. It’s not enough. Kame’s not sure how much time _would_ be enough.

“Can we talk?” Jin says, in a rush, and Kame swallows, bracing himself against the kitchen counter. “I just… I really…”

“Later,” Kame says. “Right now, I don’t have a lot of time.”

“Right, of course,” Jin says, and the words are thick. Kame looks up at Jin, through the cover over his bangs, and Jin looks wound up and miserable, like a kicked puppy, and it makes Kame’s stomach clench up uncomfortably.

“I didn’t say never,” Kame says. “I just said not right now.” And Jin finds his gaze and holds it, and like always, it’s like Jin’s looking into him, reading between the lines.

Jin’s skin is dry on the bridge of his nose, Kame thinks disjointedly, as the coffee pot makes an obnoxious noise hat lets him know the coffee is ready.

“Okay,” Jin says, his lips making a thin line. “I can wait.”

Kame knows all about waiting.

He pours two cups of coffee, and adds two spoons of sugar to his and milk to Jin’s, and Jin watches him with careful eyes. Their fingers brush when Jin takes the mug from Kame’s hand, and there’s a spark. There’s always a spark, Kame thinks, one he’s never been able to feel with anyone else.

“You want to come?” Kame asks, before he can stop himself. “To Ueda’s, I mean.”

Jin takes a sip of his coffee, eyes closing blissfully. “You’ve always made better coffee than anyone else,” Jin says. Then he licks his lips, and pushes a strand of messy hair behind his ear. “And yes.”

Kame smiles, and Jin smiles back, soft and tentative. 

Jin, Kame knows, has always wanted to be brave.

*

The fourteenth postcard is from Greece. Beautiful, Mediterranean Greece. `Santorini Ja` it says, and Kame only knows it’s Greece because of the small type on the back, and the little Greek flag Kame only recognizes thanks to there having been an Olympics there a while back, plastering the flag across televisions around the world. The smooth, white-plastered building is captured in front of the setting sun, blue-domed roofs in stark contrast to the orange and gold sky. 

Kame can see the reflection of the sun in the clear, gorgeous water.

It makes Kame think of Odysseus, who went to fight a war in Troy and took more than twenty years to come home. Odysseus braved a Cyclops, an enchantress, the Underworld and sirens, all in the effort to return to Ithaca.

It makes Kame feel like Penelope, waiting and waiting without knowing for sure whether the seas will be fair, or when the waves will bring in the ship Kame is longing for.

Odysseus, Kame thinks, was known for his cunning and wit, and he outsmarted all his foes to deliver himself safely back from whence he came.

Jin’s not known for his cunning or his wit, he’s just got his big, stupid, sensitive heart and his good intentions. And Jin’s foes aren’t the sort that Jin would be able to outsmart, anyway, because they’re all parts of Jin that Jin had tried and tried to hide away.

So Kame’s just pushes a pin into the wall, and waits, and waits, and waits, watching to see if the tide will change.

 

*

 

Jin tries to explain it. “Sometimes, I just keep lying here, and lying here,” Jin says. “And I think that if I just lie here long enough, I’ll disappear.”

“Why would you want to disappear?” Kame asks, and he wants to reach out to Jin, but Jin often doesn’t want to be touched. He shies away from it, even if it’s Kame. 

“I don’t know,” Jin says. “Sometimes I just want people to stop looking at me.” Jin pushes his hair out of his face, and Kame’s eyes linger on the graceful slope of Jin’s forehead in profile, and the way that mole by his eye is exposed when the front of Jin’s hair is trapped in the spaces between his fingers. It’s these small things that make Jin beautiful, Kame thinks. “Sometimes I think if they stop looking I can stop existing for them and start existing for myself again.”

“Do you want me to stop looking?” Kame asks, and Jin pauses, languid and liquid, eyes soft as they swerve to take in Kame’s serious countenance.

“No,” Jin says, and Kame feels like the energy between them, that undefined force that drags them together over and over again, as hard as they pull in opposite directions, and is opaque enough to touch. It’s so thick in the air around them that Kame doesn’t know how much longer he’ll be able to stand the suffocation. “Not you,” Jin says. “You make me feel less lost.”

Kame reaches forward and rests his fingertips near Jin’s bicep. They don’t make contact with the skin, but Kame knows Jin can feel his fingers all the same. Shared heat, and maybe a flicker of understanding.

**Part Four**

 

*

 

_Thou, sun, art half as happy'as we,_  
In that the world's contracted thus;  
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be  
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.  
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;  
This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere. 

\--The Sun Rising, John Donne

 

*

 

“Sorry I’m late,” Kame says, when Junno answers the door in a pair of comfortable looking sweatpants, like it’s his place and not Ueda’s. “But I brought a friend,” he adds as he walks into the flat, Jin at his heels. 

“Holy shit,” Koki says, and the glass he’s holding slips from his hand and crashes to the ground, spilling water everywhere. Ueda swears, loudly, and leans down to pick up the glass as Koki bounds to the door and grabs Jin in a fierce hug. “Jin fucking Akanishi, you’re alive.”

“I am,” Jin says, and fingers the bruise around his eye, wincing as his fingers find a particularly raw spot. 

“Kame,” Nakamaru says chidingly. “Haven’t you learned your lesson about punching people in the face?”

Kame bristles. “It was fifteen years ago, and the next person that brings it up, I _will_ punch in the face,” Kame mutters. “Seriously.”

“Ah, no, this one’s from Yamapi, I’m afraid,” Jin interrupts, and leans against Koki, who is still looking at Jin like he’s seen a ghost. 

“Yamapi?” Junno exclaims. “But he’s so…gentle.”

“I’ve been a very bad friend,” Jin says quietly, with no excuse in his voice. “And I’ve got a lot to make up for.” Kame can feel Jin’s eyes on him, but Kame focuses in on Ueda, ignoring the way he wants to reach out and touch any part of Jin he can reach, or press the back of his hand to the back of Jin’s, just so he can remind himself that Jin’s really here. “Congratulations,” Jin says to Nakamaru, and Nakamaru beams. 

“Thanks!”

“And inviting me…” Jin shoves his hands in his pockets. “Thanks for that.”

“Wouldn’t be the same without you,” Nakamaru says quietly, and Jin’s eyes are a little glassy. Everyone’s are, really.

“Do you have the music sheets? I don’t really remember the arrangement,” Kame says, like he does in interviews when things get off track. 

“I do,” Ueda says, and there’s an awkward moment where they’re all frozen in place, and Jin clears his throat.

“I’m going to have a smoke,” Jin says, and gestures toward the balcony. “Kame rushed me this morning.”

“I hate being late,” Kame says. “And you wake up too slow.” It’s a conversation they’ve had countless times. It doesn’t feel out of place. Step by step.

Jin scowls a little, but it’s playful, and then he fishes around in his trouser pockets for his cigarettes, walking out onto the balcony and letting the glass door shut behind him. Kame watches him light up, leaning forward with his forearms resting on the rail, hair blowing gently in the wind. He looks like a magazine cover, Kame thinks, even with the bruise on his face and his hair uncombed. 

“So, you and Jin had a slumber party last night,” Koki says teasingly, and Nakamaru snorts while Kame rolls his eyes. “Should I be jealous, Kame-chan? I thought we had something special.”

“He fell asleep on the couch after I made him apply ice to his eye,” Kame says. “You know I’d never cheat on you, sweetheart.”

Koki drops an arm around Kame’s shoulders and pulls him into a sideways hug. “Did you guys talk?”

“No,” Kame says. “Not yet.”

Nakamaru drums his fingers on the coffee table, and sighs. “Should we get started? Meisa’s freaking out over place cards, and I’ll have to go console her in a couple of hours when she realizes I have an odd number of cousins.”

Koki suppresses a laugh, and it comes out like a squeal, loud, and they all laugh, and then Ueda passes out music sheets, and blows his pitch pipe, and they begin.

They sound pretty good, Kame thinks, for not having done this in two years. They sound clear, and their voices meld together well. They’ve been singing this song for over twenty years, and it’s like no time has passed as they trip and stumble over half-forgotten lyrics, picking up each other’s slack in the way they always have.

Kame’s not sure when Jin comes back inside. All he knows is that when they get to the chorus, suddenly there’s a high tenor harmonizing with him, lifting the volume up, sweet and clear, in a way Kame hasn’t heard in so long he thinks he’s imagining it. 

But he isn’t, and Jin’s voice is threading through their own, and they sound so full and whole that Kame throbs with it. KAT-TUN, he thinks. A KAT-TUN where he’s only the ‘K’ and the ‘A’ is soaring, filling in holes and gliding across high notes effortlessly, letting Koki fall back down into his natural range with a surprised smile. 

“Sorry,” Jin says, flushing, when the song ends and they all turn to stare at him. “I’ve always liked this song.”

Ueda raises an eyebrow at Jin. “You need to go drink some water, Akanishi. Your voice was straining there, at the end. You’re out of practice.”

“I am not,” Jin retorts, and his hands bunch up into the fabric of his jeans, clutching them like he’s afraid they’ll all be furious with him for singing along. Kame thinks that’s ridiculous. “I still sing all the time. I just don’t get filmed doing it.” Jin shakes his hair out of his face. “Still, sorry, I know I’m not…” Jin trails off, and Kame knows it’s because Jin has so many possible endings to that sentence that he isn’t sure what to choose. 

Kame catches Ueda’s eye, and Ueda nods. 

“You’ll always be KAT-TUN’s ‘A’,” Kame says. “If you want to be.”

Jin looks like he might cry, and Ueda breaks the moment by clapping his hands. “Are you in or out, Akanishi? We’ve got to practice again.”

“I’m in,” Jin says, after barely a moment’s hesitation, and Koki’s beaming and Junno’s jumping up and down in place like an overexcited rabbit. Nakamaru has a dopey grin on his face, and Ueda looks pleased, too. Kame wonders what expression is on his own face right now. 

“Kita is going to flip out,” Koki says with a chuckle. “Totally flip out.”

“It’ll be on camera,” Kame warns, and Jin bites on his lower lip and looks straight at Kame without flinching. “I know,” Jin says. “And…that’ll be okay.”

“Then let’s go,” Nakamaru says, and then they are singing. 

 

*

 

There’s something enchanting in the way Jin looks when he thinks no one is watching. The tension melts from his shoulders, and the bravado leaves his face, and all that’s left is the Jin Kame knows; the Jin he grew up with, and the Jin who isn’t stumbling over every single word he says because he’s learned too many lessons about speaking out of turn. 

“I’m going,” Jin says, and Kame sits down next to him on the bench. There is only about a foot between them, but it feels like miles. “To California. Again.”

“Yeah,” Kame says. “I heard.” Kame’s throat is dry, and the air he brings in on his next intake smells like cigarette smoke. Jin isn’t smoking, though, just sitting there, legs spread and eyes on the sky. “Management told us.”

“I was going to tell you,” Jin says, frowning. “But I kept thinking that no one would like it. I’m not sure I like it.”

“You’re not coming back, are you?” Kame asks, and the silence in the air after he asks makes him feel like the Earth has hushed to listen for Jin’s answer. Inside of him though, his heart is thundering, loud and crashing, and Kame knows the answer... But hearing Jin say it will make it real. Kame has always needed things to be real.

“Probably not,” Jin says. “Probably not.” Jin’s got a purple scarf wrapped around his neck, and it draws Kames gaze to the dark circles under Jin’s eyes; makes them seem more harsh in the bright light of day.

“Okay,” Kame says, and he doesn’t know what else to say. He looks over at Jin, who doesn’t look afraid or nervous or sad. Jin’s just looking up at the sky, like up there he can see his own bright future.

But then Jin looks at Kame, and Kame can see it buried there in his eyes—that hidden spark of melancholy that Jin would rather Kame not see, but Kame always sees. Kame knows Jin so well, even when he can’t fathom the ‘why’s or the ‘how’s.

Jin knows Kame too. “It’s not like we’ll never see each other again,” Jin says. “So stop looking at me like that.”

Kame can’t. So instead he looks up at the sky too, wondering if he can see what Jin sees up there. All he sees are clouds.

Jin’s fingertips lightly brush his own, and Kame can barely call it a touch, but it sends a sort of fleeting warmth up his arm and into his chest, speeding up the thudding beat of his heart.

 

*

 

Jin’s always been more into soccer than baseball.

He wonders if that’s what Jin is doing in Argentina. The postcard has Lionel Messi across the front, in his uniform of white and light blue, name scrawled in cursive letters, gold and embossed. He’s dribbling a ball down the field, hair wet with perspiration; an action shot. 

It’s the seventh postcard. 

_Soccer players are like me,_ Jin’s written. _Always running._

 

*

 

“Where should I drop you?” Kame says, as Jin rests in the passenger seat, looking jetlagged and exhausted. “Your parent’s house?”

“Yeah,” Jin says. “Thanks.”

“It’s not out of my way,” Kame says.

“Not for the ride,” Jin says. “For… yesterday.”

“You already had a black eye,” Kame says. “Wasn’t much left to do.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Jin says, and his throat does sound a little raw.

“Have you really been singing?” Kame asks, and Jin tilts toward him. Jin’s body language is open. If Kame was giving or receiving an interview, he’d take it as a good sign. 

But Kame is not giving an interview. Kame is talking to Jin, whose mood can change so quickly that Kame gets whiplash. “Yeah,” Jin says. “In, like, bars and stuff. Small shows under another name. I love singing.” Jin pulls away again, resting his head against the window. His hair fans out around his shoulders. “It’s the rest I didn’t really like.”

“You liked being famous, sometimes,” Kame says, slowing the car at a traffic light. “It wasn’t all bad, right?”

Jin’s hand creeps out and grabs a hold of a small piece of Kame’s shirt, just a pinch of the material between his index finger and thumb, the way he does when he wants reassurance and he doesn’t know how to ask for it. “No,” Jin says. “It definitely wasn’t.”

“The America stuff… that was worth it, right?” Jin’s always so hot, Kame thinks. Sweltering. Just the small point of contact between them makes Kame feel like he’s blistering. 

“It was a taste of freedom,” Jin says. “The real thing is better.”

“Ah,” Kame says, and the light won’t change. Jin’s face is still mashed against the window, and Kame wonders if he’s even looking at anything, or if he’s just not-looking at Kame. 

“But it gave me you,” Jin says. “Us.”

“What ‘us’?” Kame says bitterly, before he can stop himself, and Jin flinches, retracting his hand. “There’s just me. And there’s you, and half the time I don’t know where you are.”

“That’s funny,” Jin says. Because the whole time, it feels like you are with me.”

That’s isn’t Kame. Kame is here, in Tokyo, making commercials and filming movies and talking about baseball, watching movies with his niece and living the life he’s made for himself. 

There’s a map on Kame’s wall, though, and a piece of Kame _was_ with Jin, Kame knows. “That’s because you’re crazy,” Kame says, and Jin laughs, flopping his head toward Kame, lower lip between his teeth. Kame’s driving, so he can’t turn completely to Jin, but out of the corner of his eye, he watches Jin study him. Kame wonders if Jin can see through him just as facilely as he can see through Jin when Jin is loose and easy like this.

“Can I see you tomorrow?” Jin asks, after a moment, and the way Jin asks… Something about it sounds hopeful. Kame doesn’t want it to. Kame doesn’t want Jin to have missed him as much as he missed Jin. He wants Jin to have been perfectly happy without him. It would make it easier, Kame thinks, to pretend like he was perfectly happy too. It would make it all this seem worth it, in the end. 

“I have work,” Kame says, and Jin sighs and closes his eyes, and Kame can see him pulling into himself. “But after work would be okay.”

“Yeah?” Jin asks, and Jin’s staring down at his shoes and Kame can’t believe that Jin is thirty-nine, because he’s still got that child-like aura that’s always made Kame want to protect him. 

“Yes,” Kame says, and Jin’s still got the most beautiful smile, and Kame’s drawn inexorably closer to the brightly burning sun. 

 

*

 

“Akanishi,” Kame says into the phone. “Why are you such an asshole?” It’s just voicemail. Jin didn’t answer his phone. 

Jin’s on the news. Back in Japan, promoting ‘Eternal.’ It’s a beautiful song. Kame remembers when Jin wrote it. 

He hasn’t called Kame. Kame hasn’t talked to him in so long he’s almost forgotten the way Jin’s voice sounds when he’s drowsy on the other end of the line, words slurred and ideas out of order like Jin always does when he’s sleepy. Kame’s wondering if he’s done something wrong.

“Whatever I did, Jin, can you just tell me? Whatever’s gone wrong between us, somewhere along the line.... I want to fix it.”

Kame’s hands grip the side of his phone, and he wonders if his knuckles are white. Kame wants to know if Jin’s finally going to lock the rest of himself up from Kame too. If even the pieces of Jin that were just for him are gone, lost in the shadows in Jin’s eyes that only grow deeper every time he sees him. 

Kame’s pulse roars in his ears, and it’s like the rushing sound of the wind when he drives in his truck with the top down, only it’s not refreshing, and Kame’s hair isn’t what’s windblown, it’s his heart. 

It burns, and Kame wonders if this what it feels like to break a bond.

 

*

 

_Heart, we will forget him,_  
You and I, tonight!  
You must forget the warmth he gave,  
I will forget the light.  
When you have done pray tell me,  
Then I, my thoughts, will dim.  
Haste! ‘lest while you’re lagging  
I may remember him! 

\--Heart, we will forget him, Emily Dickenson

 

*

 

Shooting is tiring. Kame’s covered in beer—his band mate, in the movie, splashes him with beer to get his attention in the first part of the scene, and for the next four hours, Kame can feel his mascara running down his eyes, and his lashes are sticky with beer, and it’s unpleasant. But Kame’s a professional, and even if the overwhelming smell makes him a little nauseous, it probably helps his performance. It’s easier to pretend to be angry when he thinks about how long his hair is going to keep smelling like this. There’s only one more day of shooting left after this. The filming had been extended so the director could shoot these two extended scenes, and so they could re-film a couple that hadn’t come out quite right, and Kame will be as relieved to creep back into his own appearance as he always is. He examines his chipped black nail polish with a frown. He likes the way his nails look better when they’re clear and glossy, these days. 

Kame calls Jin’s mom when he gets off work. The number is long unused, and Kame worries that she’ll have changed it, but it’s still the same. She answers with a chipper “Bonjour,” and that’s how Kame knows it’s her—Jin’s mom always answers the phone in some foreign language, from a movie she’s just watched or a website she’s been looking at. All the Akanishis have weird quirks like that, and Kame thinks it makes them fun. 

“Is Jin there?” he asks, and she’s cooing into the phone, and Kame’s smiling despite the way he feels gross, because she’s sweet.

“Kame-chan, is that you?” she asks, and she sounds shocked. “It’s so nice to hear your voice.”

“Yours too,” Kame says. “Really, it is.”

“I wish you’d call more often,” she says. “I hear from Pisuke all the time.” Kame quirks a smile as he remembers the way Jin used to whine about his mom stealing all his friends. It’s still cute, Kame thinks. She’s still got it. 

“Sorry,” Kame says. “I just didn’t…” The towel he’s got around his neck is starting to smell like beer too. Kame will go shower, in a minute, but he’d wanted to do this first. 

“I know,” she says. “I get it.” Her voice is rich and warm, and she talks like a woman in her thirties, even when it’s been a long time since she was that. 

“Is Jin there?” Kame asks, after a bit of awkward silence.

“Jin’s still sleeping.”

“Oh,” Kame says. “In that case-“

“Oh, no you don’t,” she says, and Kame can hear the scolding in her voice. “I’ll go wake him up.”

“Okay,” Kame says, and wraps his arm around himself as he leans against his truck. Normally he’d protest, but Kame wants her to wake Jin up. He doesn’t want Jin to sleep through the short time he’s got here, and the short time Kame’s got to spend with him before he jets off again.

About a minute later, Jin’s sleepy voice is on the other end of the line, and Kame knows what Jin looks like right now, all sleep-heavy limbs and ruffled hair, and now there’s all these new little details too, like Jin’s stubble and the way the sun’s bleached out places on the ends of his hair. “Hullo?” Jin says, in English, and Kame feels this giant, warm bubble expanding in his chest.

“I’m getting off work,” Kame says, and Jin gasps at Kame’s voice. “Do you want me to come and get you?”

“Yeah,” Jin says, sounding more awake. Then Jin’s swearing, and Kame can hear him stumbling out of his covers, and Kame’s throat is dry, because he can this, all of this, in his head, and it makes him feel impossibly young, or like he’s outside of time. “Fuck, just tore my jeans.”

“They were already torn,” Kame says. “If you mean the ones from yesterday.”

“Oh,” Jin says, breathlessly, like he’s nervous, or like this is a date, and not two… friends grabbing dinner to try and catch up on seven years of silence. “I’ll be ready. When you get here.”

“Sure,” Kame says easily, like his heart isn’t beating a mile a minute at the soft sound of Jin’s voice on the other end of the line. “Forty minutes.”

Jin slides easily into the car, later, and he wrinkles his nose. “Have you been drinking?” Jin asks, and Kame laughs, and explains about the shooting, and Jin asks tiny, hesitant questions, like he isn’t sure he’s allowed to know the answers. Like he isn’t sure he’s allowed to ask about Kame’s life.

Kame gets that. He’s afraid too. He wants to know all the places Jin has been, and all the things Jin has seen, but parts of him don’t want to know the answer. 

Kame takes Jin out for clams. Jin likes clams, even if the way he eats them is disgusting, with weird sauces that almost want to make Kame gag, except Jin looks so cute eating them that Kame can’t be too upset. 

Kame offers to drop Jin off at home, but Jin shakes his head no.

“I’ll just take the train,” Jin says. “Later, I mean. It’s not like anyone remembers my face.” 

“You’d be surprised,” Kame says, and Jin shrugs.

“A cab, then,” Jin replies. “I want to watch a movie. Do you have any movies?”

“You know I have movies,” Kame replies. Kame’s got hundreds of movies, because people always give them to him as gifts, despite the fact that Kame’s really not the sort who loves movies. He’s _in_ movies, so a little of the magic is gone there, and he also tends to want to use his free time to see the people he loves or catch up on sleep. Still, he’s got a formidable collection, even if half of them are still in the cellophane wrappers because he’s never opened them.

“Still in the packaging?” Jin asks knowingly, and Kame’s floating, and he doesn’t know if he likes this feeling. He doesn’t know if he likes the way it’s so easy to fall back into step with Jin. 

Jin doesn’t go home that night, and Kame doesn’t make him leave. Jin just puts on Titanic, and curls up on the end of the sofa, eyes glued to the screen.

“So this is still your favorite movie, huh?” Kame asks, and Jin glances at him with a small grin.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jin says, as he returns to the screen. Leonardo DiCaprio is smiling roguishly at the red-haired woman whose name escapes Kame at the moment. “My favorite movie is Tomb Raider. Angelina Jolie’s boobs.” But Jin’s lips twitch as he says it, because he knows Kame can read the truth in the way Jin turns the volume up after the opening credits roll.

Kame feels drowsy at the other end of the couch before the boat even sinks, his toes pressing against Jin’s thigh. Jin’s hand comes down to rest on his ankle, and it’s strangely comforting. It doesn’t feel like the two people on the couch haven’t seen each other in seven years, or like they’ve been drifting further and further apart even as their hearts try and pull them together. It feels more like breathing in the fresh air at the beginning of fall, or like the first sip of coffee, lifting heavy eyes to start a new day.

Jin thumb rubs in a circle along the bone in Kame’s ankle, and Kame falls to sleep to a chorus of violins, and the image of Jin’s drawn brow staring despairingly at the screen.

When he wakes up, he’s alone on the couch. 

The image of Jin sitting on his kitchen sink with a half-smoked cigarette in his mouth is not an unfamiliar one, but some things have changed, Kame thinks. Jin’s arms aren’t so thin, now, and he’s got patches of sunburned skin along his neck where his tank shirt doesn’t cover. Jin’s back is straight instead of hunched, too, and when he looks at Kame, his eyes are clear. Kame looks away quickly. 

“You could smoke outside,” Kame says, and Jin laughs. 

“I could,” he agrees. “But I’m not going to, because it’s hot outside.” There’s a bit of a whine in his voice, and Kame isn’t expecting it. 

“I’ve always let you get away with it before,” Kame sighs. “Why change my ways now?”

Jin smiles, crookedly. “Can we talk?”

“Do we have to?” Kame asks, and Jin blows a ring of smoke up towards the vent above the stove. 

“You’re one of the most important people in the world to me, Kame,” Jin says. “That’s never changed.”

“But it wasn’t enough,” Kame says, and Jin presses the heel of his palm to his forehead.

“I found a specialist,” Jin says. “In America. One who didn’t know anything about me.” Jin chuckles. “When I was trying to become famous in America, I thought that would finally make me happy. I was making the music I wanted to make, and I could walk around without a disguise, most of the time. It was nice.” Jin laughs at himself. “But I guess you can only bury your problems for so long.”

Kame sits down on the kitchen table, and lets his legs dangle from the edge, and Jin stares down to where Kame’s leg presses against the table leg.

“You used to yell at me for that,” Jin says. “Sitting on your kitchen table.”

“The table’s not new anymore,” Kame says. “And I’ve got lots of nephews.”

“Oh,” Jin says. “I guess that makes sense.”

“What did your specialist say?” Kame asks.

“That I was depressed,” Jin says. “And that I was afraid.”

“You had to go to America for that?” Kame says, and Jin laughs, and Kame reaches across the meter or so between them and snags Jin’s cigarette. That’s familiar too. 

“Yeah,” Jin says. “I did.” His eye’s fading to a lovely mottled green. Kame can see the dark circles under his eyes underneath the bruise.

“Right,” Kame says, and the smoke stings his lungs. “Did you learn anything new?”

“Yeah,” Jin says, and he tries to hold Kame’s gaze but Kame’s looking at the ceiling now, and thinking about the map on his wall.

“Me too,” Kame says, and Jin takes back his cigarette. 

 

*

 

Kame steps out of the elevator and into the lobby, and the man waiting, thumb pressed to the call button, is the last person Kame is prepared to see.

“Jin,” Kame says, and Jin’s got his hood up. It creates a shadow, and Kame can’t see his eyes. 

“Kame,” Jin says, and he points awkwardly at the car waiting outside the door. Jin doesn’t come around Johnny’s very often and it shows. Kame can see his hesitance in the set of his shoulders. They bow forward, and Jin’s mouth is tight. “You heading out?”

“Yes,” Kame says, and he swallows. He can’t take his eyes off of Jin. Jin is like a ghost: someone who exists only in Kame’s daydreams, and seeing him now, flesh and bone in front of Kame’s hungry eyes, is hard to fathom. “It’s been a long time.”

“It has,” Jin says, and his voice hitches, and he coughs. “Been a long time, I mean.”

“It doesn’t always have to be a long time,” Kame says, and Jin tugs anxiously on the sleeves of his sweatshirt, pulling the ends until they cover his hands. He’s like an overgrown child. Kame snorts, and Jin’s mouth falls into the shape of an ‘O’ at the sound, and maybe that expression of surprise makes this all feel real to Kame, not the product of an overactive imagination. “My phone number is the same. You can talk to me about how many kids you want to have or something.” There’s a clench in Kame’s stomach.

“You look good,” Jin says, and then he tenses, like he didn’t mean to say that, or like his mouth ran off before his brain could catch up. “I mean, you look healthy, and happy, and—“

“I am,” Kame says. “Healthy and happy. The band is doing well, too.” They both look, startled, when the elevator doors close behind Kame’s back. The elevator has been called elsewhere. Jin will have to wait for the next one.

“I saw that,” Jin says. “I mean, I keep up with it. And stuff.” Jin reaches up and scratches at his nose. “Sort of.”

“And my phone number is still the same,” Kame repeats, and Jin sighs.

“It’s complicated.”

“Did I do something?” Kame asks. “For some reason, I thought we had managed to fix things, before. Then you dropped off the face of the Earth.”

“I was in America.” Jin’s voice is hoarse, sort of like he’s holding his breath. A piece of black, wavy hair peeks out from under his hood. Jin’s always had a way of looking charming despite his lack of polish. Kame wants to push the hair back, tuck it behind Jin’s ear and see if Jin’s locked away again.

“My email’s the same too,” Kame replies, and the elevator, that Jin’s pressed the up button on, is still six floors away. “I miss you.”

Kame isn’t just talking about now, he’s talking about then, and Jin understands, Kame knows Jin understands, because suddenly Jin’s standing closer, and now Kame can see his eyes, bright and nervous beneath floppy bangs. “I miss you too,” Jin says, and Kame’s heart quivers at the waver in Jin’s thin voice. Jin’s lips are tight.

“Then why are you hiding from me?”

“It’s complicated.”

“It’s not that complicated,” Kame replies. “You’re important to me, Jin. And the way you flash hot and cold makes it hard for me to figure out if I’m important to _you_.”

“God, Kame,” Jin says, and then Jin is even closer, and Kame can smell the mint on his breath, and Kame is picking up the faint scent of Jin’s laundry detergent, too. “Of course you’re—“ Jin stops, and laughs a little. “Do you really not get it?”

“Really, Jin. I really don’t get it.” Kame hooks his thumbs through his own belt loops, and their arms brush as he moves.

“I’m not flashing hot and cold,” Jin says, and Kame peers under that silly hood to watch Jin’s shifting eyes. “I’m a mess, Kame.”

“You’ve always been a mess,” Kame replies, and Jin leans against him a little, almost unconsciously, Kame thinks, and at least some things will always be the same. 

“I don’t want to drag you into this,” Jin says. “I don’t want to take you down with me. Because if I let you… If I let you, you will.” The way he says it borders on panicked, and Kame’s heart skips a beat, because Jin’s…Kame thinks Jin is acknowledging that strange tension between them, that Kame’s never understood and that Jin’s always backed away from like a skittish colt. “You always do.”

“Oh, Jin,” Kame says, and laughs. “I’m your friend, Jin. You’re not taking me down. I’m following you. Or I’m pulling you up.” Kame pushes his hair back. It’s too long. He’ll cut it before New Year’s. 

“Kame,” Jin says desperately. “It’s complicated.”

“Is it about lights-out days?” Kame asks, and Jin scratches at his face, hard enough to leave his cheek a little red. “Because Jin, we were in the same group for years. You don’t have to push us, _me_ , out over that.”

“It’s not that,” Jin says, and Jin is stepping back from Kame a little, almost running into the potted plant that rests between the two elevators. Jin swears under his breath in English, and exasperation rises in Kame’s chest and he wants answers from Jin. He’s tired of Jin’s voicemail and Jin showing up when he feels like it, throwing Kame’s life into disarray and then disappearing again as if he never was. It hurts, and it’s always been, well, _complicated_ between them, like Jin and Kame are from two separate planets and speak two different languages, at the same time as some inevitable force is pulling them together. Sometimes Kame knows what Jin needs with just the angle of Jin’s brows, and sometimes Kame feels like he’ll never know what Jin needs, because Jin’s trying so hard to block him out. “There’s something else.”

“Jin, after all this time, I don’t think there’s anything you need to hide from me. Not if it’ll help you to say it to someone.”

“You remember what it was like,” Jin says. “When we were friends.” Kame reels back at Jin’s words.

“I thought we still were,” Kame says, and Jin’s lips press even tighter.

“I meant…” Jin sighs. “You know, publically.” Kame raises and eyebrow, and Jin looks away from it. “You know…too close.”

“You don’t have to be afraid of being close to me. The world won’t end. Is this about…” Kame thinks about Jin’s baggy clothes, about Jin hiding his thin frame beneath them like he’s trying to disappear into their folds. He thinks about Jin, cringing back when Koki tells him how pretty he is. He thinks about a PV where no one can see Jin’s face. “Jin, is this all about some gay rumors? Some _speculations_ in a tabloid are making you run away? Jin, that’s such _bullshit._ ”

“It’s not bullshit. I gave a UStream conference and foreign fans sent hundreds of messages about _Akame_ , Kame. That’s what they call it, overseas, instead of Akakame.”

“It’s just nonsense, Jin. It happens to everyone in our business. It doesn’t _mean_ anything.”

Jin makes this helpless noise and jams his hands into his jean pockets as the elevator dings its arrival. “Are you sure about that?” Jin says grimly, and Kame’s about to say ‘yes’, to reach forward, but then the elevator doors are opening, and Jin is walking in and pressing the ‘door-close’ button harshly, and Kame is left standing there, mouth half open in preparation to speak, hands grasping at empty air.

Kame thinks about Jin all day. Through two interviews, a meeting, and a rushed business lunch that might result in another CM series that will plaster Kame’s face in subway cars.

“Kamenashi,” his manager says, and Kame looks up, surprised to see the car stopped in front of his home. “Get some rest. You’re totally out of it.”

Kame’s not tired, though. He’s all pent up, raging against his own skin. He just wants…

He just wants to talk to Jin. To know why Jin keeps pulling away when Kame just wants him to come closer. He wants to know how Jin is doing. He wants to know that Jin is okay. That Jin, now that he doesn’t have Kame to curl up against under the duvet as he hides from the world, isn’t leaving important pieces of himself just lying around for other people to find.

Kame finds himself inside his apartment before he can blink, and he’s going through the motions, pulling an instant dinner out of the fridge and putting it in the microwave. He sets the timer for five minutes.

The doorbell.

Kame wonders if it’s his niece, carrying a carton of juice and a couple of films in her hand, trying to forget about school deadlines in an evening with her uncle. Kame wouldn’t mind that, not tonight.

It’s not his niece. It’s Jin, and Jin is inside in his _genkan_ in his oversized black sweatshirt and Kame still can’t see his hands and even more hair is falling into his face. 

Jin closes the door behind him; just slams it, and Jin doesn’t give Kame a chance to register his presence. “What if they’re right?” Jin says, and his voice breaks, and then he pushes Kame against the hard wall of the hallway and kisses him.

Jin’s mouth is rough, and Kame’s too surprised to kiss him back. Jin pulls away quickly, and presses himself against the opposite wall, hands flat against the surface, leaving Kame to stare across at him and touch his lips with shock. Kame’s mouth is tingling. “Oh,” Kame says, and Jin’s shoulders hunch forward. “This might make it harder for you to have kids.”

“You think I haven’t thought of that?”

“How long…?”

“A long time,” Jin replies. “Oh god, a long time.” Jin’s voice crackles along the words, and yes, Kame thinks, this _is_ complicated.

Kame’s mind is racing, and he’s putting together pieces as fast as he can, but the microwave is chiming, and he’d never meant to leave that bento in there for the whole time, and it’s probably ruined, and Jin is crawling even deeper into himself as Kame tries to figure out what he should do.

Kame thinks about the way his heart beats faster when Jin moves closer to him, and also about the way Jin’s always tried to pull back, that look Kame could never understand lingering in his big, honest eyes. He thinks about the way Jin’s touch, some small brush of skin against skin, sets Kame on fire, and the way Jin’s always flinching back like he’s been burnt. “You…” Kame says, searching for the words, and Jin’s staring at his red neon shoes and Kame’s staring at Jin.

Kame thinks love is like the sun, and its rays are so harsh on the both of them right now as they orbit around it.

And now, Kame’s starting to think that maybe Jin’s always understood the pull between them better than Kame has. That Jin has known that _kizuna_ meant those meaning-laden touches in the dark. “Yeah,” Jin says. “It’s—“

And Kame kisses him. Kame sets his hands against the wall on either side of Jin’s face and dives forward, and Jin hesitates only a moment before he opens up beneath him. Jin’s knees are slightly bent, and Kame’s right thigh slides between them, and Kame’s chest is pressed to Jin’s. Jin’s arms set themselves carefully along Kame’s hips, hands grasping at Kame’s flannel shirt at the small of his back. 

And this, maybe, says everything they’ve never been able to say, traveling between them in a code they both comprehend that’s comprised of needy tongues and desperate lips that seek their mates.

Jin’s mouth is like an inferno, dragging Kame deeper and deeper, and Kame doesn’t mind. “Jin,” Kame says against Jin’s lips, and Jin shudders again, and then he’s pushing Kame away.

“We can’t,” Jin says. “You know we can’t.” Jin sounds strained. “I’m too fucked up and you’re too Kamenashi.”

“Too Kamenashi?” Kame asks. “What do you mean?”

“I mean… fuck, Kame. Being gay isn’t good for business.”

“This isn’t business,” Kame says, and Jin laughs. 

“Everything is business, Kame. Personal lives are for people who don’t live under a goddamn microscope, people picking apart every word you’re saying and writing about what a terrible person you are on the message boards.”

“I did Anan,” Kame says. “I can get away with anything.”

“Yeah, but actually wanting to fuck a man, Kame? That’s not being a Johnny. Johnny’s do it for fanservice. They touch each other but they’re still available to be their fan’s perfect boyfriend.”

“Jin, what are you saying?”

“I can’t… I’ve never been good at lying. At pretending to care when I don’t, or at pretending not to care when I do. And I can’t… I can’t share this feeling, and I can’t not share it, either.”

Kame’s trying to keep up, but he can’t keep track of the jumping of Jin’s thoughts. “What?”

“It’s easier not to talk to you than to pretend I want less from you than I do,” Jin says, and now maybe Kame’s starting to understand. “I know it doesn’t make any sense. I’m so fucked up.”

“Jin,” Kame says, and his whole body is buzzing, telling him to move closer and kiss Jin again. Kame’s torn between wanting to listen to Jin, and his head telling him he’s stupid for not having figured all this out before. Jin’s not supposed to have figured this out first, because now Kame doesn’t have time to think through how to talk him down. How to make it okay. 

That’s one of Kame’s jobs, even when he and Jin haven’t talked in months and months, because Kame’s one of the only people in the world that can still Jin’s shaking with a single touch. 

“Now you know,” Jin says. “So you can stop asking, because you know.”

Kame understands what the tension between them is now; that feeling like lava is running through his veins instead of blood. “Jin, this…”

“We can’t,” Jin says despairingly, and Kame feels like someone’s dropped a bucket of ice-water down on them both, because Kame’s frozen and Jin is shivering. “I’m not going to take you down with me.”

“Then why did you…?”

“I at least owed you an explanation,” Jin says. “At least an answer for the silence.”

“Jin,” Kame says. “I…”

“I know,” Jin says. “Because really, it’s always been this between us, Kame, even if I tried not to admit it. It’s always been this, and it hurts, looking at you.”

“Hurts?”

“I spend my days trying to come up with words that aren’t ‘leave me alone,’ and my nights trying to push back the words I really want to say. I do millions of things it terrifies me to do, and can’t do one of the things I’m most sure of.” Jin’s hand reaches out tentatively, like he’s not sure he’s allowed, and his fingers brush at Kame’s cheek. “I’m so tired, and some days I don’t…” The words are tumbling over each other, like Jin’s trying to get them all out before he thinks better of it. “It’s easier to stay in bed, those days.” Jin lets his hand fall from Kame’s cheek, drawing back into himself. “I don’t want to drag you into the dark with me.”

“What if I wanted to go?” Kame says boldly, even as he quakes. “What if your dark days didn’t scare me? What if I thought the days with the lights on were worth all the days with the lights off?”

“What if it cost you your career?” Jin says, and the words cut through Kame. “What if it costs you KAT-TUN? Dramas? Movies? What if I asked you to give up everything to come with me.” Jin wraps his arms around himself. “I want to disappear, sometimes, and I’m not selfish enough to take you with me.”

Kame’s heart is uncontrollably racing. Kame’s shaken up, and the strangest thing is, for a fleeting second, he’s willing to cast it all aside, before reality surges back in. It’s not just Kame, after all. There are people depending on him, and he’s still got dreams he wants to pursue. Goals. He wonders if Jin catches the flicker of indecision in his eyes. “Jin…”

“I won’t ask you,” Jin says. “I just wanted you to know why I… for _years_ I…” Jin takes a deep breath. “Just be my friend.” Jin’s mouth is swollen and shiny, but Kame knows better than to reach forward and claim it. “Just stay my friend.”

“I will if you let me,” Kame says, and the bond between them thrums strong and powerful, undeniable to them both.

“I’ll let you,” Jin says. “Oh god, I’ll let you.”

Kame laces their fingers together, and it hurts a little less. “Okay,” Kame says, and Kame gets ready to pretend.

 

*

 

Kame’s shaking hands with the staff, thanking them for their hard work, bowing at the waist over and over again until he feels dizzy, and it’s done. It’s the first time Kame’s wrapped a project without another in the wings in years, and there’s an overwhelming relief that his body belongs to him again, and not to a stylist or to a character. 

Kame’s been itching for a vacation for a while. He’s still got a radio show, of course, and he still does sports news once a week, joking around with Saitoh about his own baseball stats while Saitoh playfully teases him about his thwarted pro career. But that’s not work, for Kame, because it’s quick, and easy, and often Kame is wearing his most comfortable jeans and a knit hat, drinking iced coffee from a aluminum can while he records the radio show, and Kame’d be talking about the same things with Saitoh, on air or off. Before they’d gotten the show two years ago, they’d say on the balcony at Saitoh’s house and talked baseball over beer. 

But no movies means Kame can take off his nail polish, scrub his face clean of eyeliner unless he feels like wearing it, and cut his hair any way he’d like. He can lose or gain ten pounds, and no one will know. That’s a nice thought.

And really, what better time than the present? Kame thinks, as he rolls down his window and his hair blows annoyingly into his face. He dials his hairdresser without thinking, and asks if he’s got any free slots in the next two hours.

“For you? Anytime,” he says, and the next think Kame knows, there are two inch chunks of hair falling to the floor under the stylists skilled scissors, and Kame’s exhaling.

The black hair, Kame’s natural color, looks like so much more on the floor than it had felt like on his head, but his head does feel lighter.

“Do you want me to take the color back up to auburn?” his hairdresser asks, and Kame remembers the way Jin had curled a piece around his finger and smiles.

“No,” Kame says. “Black is fine.”

He feels like himself again when he walks out of the salon, hair shorn so that it falls in shorter layers around his face and barely touches the back of his neck.

His phone is ringing. “Kamenashi!” Ryo’s yelling into the phone, kind of like he’s in the middle of a laugh and it hasn’t quite tapered off. “Do you want to catch drinks with us?”

“Who is included in ‘us’?” Kame asks, already mentally cataloguing the things he has to do tonight as either ‘immediate’ or ‘can wait until tomorrow’. Nothing is really falling into the first category except feed Ieyasu, who gets grouchy if he isn’t fed on time, but Kame has an automatic feeder for that purpose, and he’s pretty sure he filled it up two days ago, as Jin used Kame’s only extra unused toothbrush to clean his teeth in the bathroom as he hummed the beat to some random upbeat song Kame’s never heard, because he and Jin have opposite tastes in music. 

“Me and Pi and Jin,” Ryo says. “Jin’s pining for you- _ow_!” Kame hears, and then it’s Jin on the phone.

“We’d like it if you came,” Jin says, and his voice is low and smooth, lazy letters the way it gets when Jin has been drinking. “I’d like it,” Jin adds. 

“Not tired of me yet, Akanishi?” Kame jokes, even as his pulse quickens just from the sound of Jin’s voice on the other end of the line. 

“Never,” Jin breathes, and then he coughs anxiously, as if he didn’t mean to say that, and Kame can hear Ryo and Yamapi laughing on the other end of the line. “Just…come.”

“See you soon,” Kame says, and Ryo texts him the name of the bar. Kame contemplates dropping his car at home and taking a cab, but he knows if he shows up in a taxi Ryo will have nothing but jokes about his inability to hold his liquor. It’s true though, so Kame does end up taking his car back to his flat, and catching a cab out to Roppongi, where his three friends have already started drinking even though it’s only four in the afternoon. The driver lets him out in front of GerOnimo, where expats spill out the doors on Friday nights, Kame remembers vaguely, and Kame doesn’t know if that’s still true, because he hasn’t been out to that sort of place in years and years, and he’s always been more of the ‘sake and conversation’ sort of guy anyway, so maybe he’s remembering wrong completely. 

Kame walks for a few blocks until he spots the place. It’s a quiet, classy looking bar, the kind Kame doesn’t feel too old for, and inside, when he opens the door, is the smell of hookah and expensive whiskey and leather. Kame likes it immediately.

Ryo waves frantically, and Jin takes advantage of Ryo’s distraction, diving in and tickling Ryo along the ribs, which makes Ryo giggle and it’s then that Kame slides into the booth next to Jin. 

The leather is cool, and so is the smooth oak of the table when Kame rests his hands on it. There are four empty glasses in front of Jin, and they all look like cranberry and vodkas. Yamapi seems to be nursing a Guinness, and Ryo’s got a Cosmo, and Kame’s lips quirk a little, wondering if he should start in this soon.

“I’ve already been teasing him about the Cosmo,” Jin slurs, and turns heavy eyes to Kame. “So feel fee to join in.”

Ryo scowls at Kame, and Kame smiles at him sweetly. “I don’t need to,” Kame says. “The fact that everyone already knows there are jokes worth making is all the satisfaction I need.” Kame raises an imperious eyebrow at one of the waiters, and she holds up one finger, telling Kame she’ll be over in just a minute. “No use beating a dead horse.”

“I have no such tact,” Ryo says. “So what’s your _one drink_ going to be tonight?”

Yamapi laughs. “It should be whatever that pretty waitress is bringing Jin,” Yamapi says. “Because he sure as hell doesn’t need another.”

“I’m fine,” Jin says, and his glassy eyes are bright and shining. “Everything’s fine.”

“Everything?” Kame asks, and Jin is melting into his side, warm and pliable, breath smelling strongly of liquor. Yamapi looks at Kame questioningly as Jin mashes his face into Kame’s shoulder, practically falling into Kame’s lap.

“Now you’re here,” Jin mumbles, and it’s muffled by Kame’s shirt, but Kame can hear him clearly anyway. Kame just sends a helpless look at Yamapi and Ryo both, and the waitress finally makes her way over.

“What can I get you?” she asks, and Kame wants to look at the drink menu but his arm is trapped. He wriggles it free and snakes it around Jin, arm pressing along the warmth of Jin’s back, so Jin falls against his chest and he can use both of his hands.

“I’ll have a tumbler of the Midleton VR, thanks,” Kame says ignoring the woman’s stare as Jin nestles himself even closer, putting his chin on Kame’s shoulder. “No ice.”

“Our friend is _done_ ,” Ryo tells her. “No matter what, don’t bring him anything else.”

“Alright,” she says with a smile, and Jin huffs, blowing warm, vodka-scented air onto Kame’s neck. Kame licks his lips, and shivers.

“I finished my movie, today,” Kame says into the still air, and Yamapi runs with it. 

“I noticed! Haircut and all,” Yamapi replies, and Jin shifts again, sliding his arm around Kame’s waist.

“If you throw up on Kame, he’s not going to be super happy,” Ryo says. “I don’t know why you insisted on chugging four vodka drinks before Kame even got here, but I guess some things never change.”

“Nervous,” Jin says, and Kame swallows as Jin’s lips brush the skin. Jin is so warm.

“I feel like this is a private moment,” Ryo says, and Yamapi laughs, and Jin lazily gives them the finger and peels himself up off of Kame, resting his arms on the table and pillowing his head on them. 

“Ryo-chan,” Jin says. “I didn’t miss you at all.” Ryo leans forward and pulls on Jin’s hair, and Jin yelps. “Just kidding!” 

“Bakanishi,” Yamapi says, and there’s a fondness in his eyes that Kame’s always thought was reserved just for Jin. “Welcome home.”

Jin lifts his head to free one of his arms, and his hand creeps its way under the table to find the hem of Kame’s t-shirt. His fingers toy with the material, and every so often the tips of his fingers brush the bare skin of Kame’s side. Kame feels like blushing, or like moving away, or maybe like moving closer. 

“I’m back,” he says, and Kame wants to cry, because Jin will be leaving again soon, and Kame will once again have an empty chest, heart beating wherever Jin takes it. 

 

*

 

Jin’s like a shirt with a hole in it, Kame thinks. Jin is a shirt that Kame wants to wear when the world feels off-kilter, when he can’t figure out up from down. Jin’s all faded, now, the ink worn away and hems unraveling, but Kame wants to wear him anyway, because Jin’s so much softer now; warm and slow smiles replacing quick and loud laughs.

It’s terrifying, Kame thinks, that no matter how much time passes, Kame can feel the slow and ever-present burn of that bond that will never break, and that Kame wants to feel the soft cotton of Jin’s touch stretching across his shoulders, holes and all.

 

*

 

It takes eleven or twelve hours to fly to Australia from Japan on a direct flight. 

When Kame gets a postcard from Australia, a kangaroo in a top hat on the front of the card, Kame looks up ticket costs and arrival times in Sydney, just because he’s curious, and not because he’s crazy.

It’s just that his heart feels further away than usual, and it’s wrenching in his chest, and for a minute, Kame wants to do something wild. 

_Haven’t seen any crocodiles_ Jin’s written, and there’s a little cartoon of one of the creatures, jaws open wide. 

Kame uses a green pushpin for that one, and he plops it straight in the middle of the continent, because he’s got no idea where Jin is.

 

*

 

Jin’s heavy, Kame thinks, as he pulls them both out of the cab in front of Jin’s house, Jin leaning on him heavily. Kame gestures to the driver to wait a moment for him, and the driver chuckles to himself. Jin’s got his finger up to his lips, like he’s telling Kame to be quiet, and Kame laughs.

“Are you really almost forty?” Kame asks. “Because there’s no way your stumbling drunk self is getting into that house without waking anyone.”

“I will if you _help_ me,” Jin says, and Kame sighs, looking longingly at the cab waiting to take him home. 

“Hold on a second,” Kame says, leaving a swaying Jin as he lets the driver know he can go on ahead, pulling cash from his pocket to pay the fare. “Okay, let’s go Jin.”

“Thanks,” Jin says, Kame thinks, and then Jin is fumbling around in his baggy jeans pocket for his keys, and when he finds them, Kame snatches them away, sliding them easily into the lock. “Why does if feel like we’re teenagers who’ve snuck out?”

“I don’t know,” Jin says. “I’ve never had to sneak out. My mom just threw condoms at my face and let me go.”

“Your family is nuts, Jin,” Kame says, and he guides Jin toward the stairs, Jin’s bodyweight mostly pressed into his side for balance. He manages to get Jin into the guest room Jin’s clearly camped out in, surveying the tattered t-shirts littering the floor with disdain and the expensive button-ups discarded the same way with a bit of dismay. “You’ve only been here four days and you’ve trashed the place.”

Jin hiccups, and collapses onto the bed, and Kame starts to tug the covers out from under him, in hopes of tucking him in. But Jin doesn’t move, and Kame makes a frustrated sound in the back of his throat, looking up at Jin, who is staring at him. “Kame,” Jin says, and Kame gives up, putting his hands on his hips. 

“Let me,” Kame says, and then Jin hooks an ankle around Kame’s knee and jerks him forward. Kame falls to the duvet on his hands and knees, on of his hands falling on Jin’s thigh. Kame feels light-headed. He’s not completely sober himself, last buzz from his whiskey still lingering. 

Jin reaches out and grabs a handful of Kame’s shirt, and Kame falls to Jin’s chest. “Kame,” Jin says again, and Kame sighs, letting Jin pull Kame into an embrace. 

“Jin, you’re drunk,” Kame says, and Jin exhales. Kame can feel it against his forehead, which rests right below Jin’s lips.

“I love your hair,” Jin says. “It’s still black.”

“Yes,” Kame says, and he lets himself fall slack as Jin hugs him a little tighter.

“Stay,” Jin says. “Even if you don’t want to, stay.”

“I’m not the one who leaves,” Kame says, but Jin’s arms are already loosening, Jin falling into sleep. Kame lifts his head to look up at Jin, who is drooling and his hair is knotted in at least three places Kame can see without really looking. Jin’s hands burn his skin. 

Kame rolls off Jin to his side, and maybe it’s the alcohol, but maybe, just for tonight, he can pretend. “Kame,” Jin mumbles in his sleep, and he curves toward Kame, settling sweetly when his clothed thigh brushes Kame’s, almost like he just wanted to know Kame was there.

“Jin, don’t do this to me,” Kame whispers to the slumbering man. “Don’t make me feel like this all over again, and then just leave.”

There’s a map in Kame’s living room, and there’s a box of postcards under Kame’s bed, and there’s Jin’s breath hot on Kame’s eyelids, and Kame can’t help but wonder if he’s going to burn alive, until there’s nothing left of him but ash and dreams he’s long since locked away.

**Part Five**

 

*

 

He sees Jin at Countdown. Jin looks at him, and looks at him, and Kame is helpless under that gaze. They’re both helpless, and Kame wants to pull Jin close to him, and kiss Jin’s soft mouth, and tell Jin it’s going to be okay.

Kame’s not sure it’s going to be okay, though, and as much as he teases and taunts in interviews, he’ll never lie outright. 

So Kame stands there, and watches Jin close up on stage. Watches Jin pull further and further into himself. Kame wonders how long he has until Jin slips through his fingers and out of his life. 

Happy 2013.

 

*

 

Kame opens his eyes to Jin’s mom’s curious face peering at him from the end of the bed. His mouth feels cottony, and he’s sweaty, yesterday’s clothes sticking to him like a second skin. His legs and Jin’s are tangled, denim chafing against denim, and Jin’s arm is trapped beneath Kame’s. “Would you like breakfast, Kazuya?” she asks, and Jin groans at the sound of he voice, flipping over to his stomach and hiding his head under the pillow.

“I’m so sorry,” Kame says, mortified, bolting up. “Jin was drunk and-“

“Oh relax, Kazuya. You know you’re welcome here anytime.” She reaches out and pats him on the shoulder. “Still like the yolk soft?”

“Yes,” Kame says. “Thank you.”

She closes the door behind her, and Kame looks down at Jin. Jin’s eyes are open, and he’s looking at Kame steadily.

“You stayed,” Jin says, almost like he can’t believe it.

“Don’t I always?” Kame says, and Jin scratches at his cheek in thought. Jin’s thinking about saying something, Kame can tell. Kame can read it in the tensed lines of Jin’s body, and in the way Jin’s no longer meeting his gaze. 

“Yeah,” Jin says. “You do.” Jin reaches out, until his fingers rest in the crook of Kame’s elbow. He traces a line up Kame’s bicep, following the blue vein up to Kame’s shoulder. Kame doesn’t move, and doesn’t know how to react. “Why?”

“Don’t you know that already?” Kame asks roughly, and he jerks his arm away. Jin lets his hand fall back to the sheets. Kame’s wallet is digging into his butt. He still has it. 

“Sometimes I think I do,” Jin says. “But then you pull away.”

“I’m not stupid,” Kame says, and it’s a lie. He’s really, really stupid, and he feels even stupider when Jin flinches back. 

“Right,” Jin says. “Right.”

“I’ve got to go,” Kame says. “I promised Kota I would play baseball with him today.”

“He’s getting old, huh?” Jin says. “We’re getting old.”

“We are,” Kame says. “Too old for me to live in ‘coulds’.”

“We’re never too old for that,” Jin says. 

“I’m leaving.”

“My mom’s making you breakfast,” Jin says. “You don’t have to run away from her, too.”

“I’ll apologize to her,” Kame answers. “And who are you to talk about running away?”

Jin doesn’t answer, just presses his face into his pillow as Kame stares down at him. 

“I guess I’ll…well, I’ll see you at the wedding?” Jin’s voice is melancholy, like he thinks Kame will say no. 

Kame swallows, and it’s a moment of weakness he can’t afford. His teeth are fuzzy, and he needs to brush them. “Are you busy tonight?”

“Why?” Jin asks, and there’s a waver in his voice that Kame thinks is so familiar. It reminds him of Kita’s interview, when he’d tried to pretend like Jin’s name wasn’t enough to shake his almost unshakable resolve. The sound pulls words from his lips.

“Rehearsal dinner,” Kame says. “You can be my plus one. Dress nice.”

Jin’s eyes are luminous, and gravity is sucking him in, and he’s falling, hot plasma sliding across his skin and interwoven magnetic fields dragging him down until there’s nothing but heat and light.

 

*

 

Kame’s been to New York City. He recognizes Times Square in the picture on the front of the card, with its neon lights and crowded streets.

In Times Square, Kame thinks, Jin can just be one of the crowd. He probably likes that. Blending in and disappearing.

_Remember?_ is all he’s written, and Kame does remember. Of course he remembers Jin’s smoke wafting up from his lit cigarette as he leans out the window, shoulders hunched. 

Kame’d only had an inkling then of how much would change.

Still, he remembers, as much as he’d sometimes like to let the memories escape into the heat and smog of a Tokyo afternoon. 

 

*

“What’s this?” Jin asks. He’s got a knit hat pulled low on his forehead, covering his ears, and sunglasses blocking the world out.

“It’s a passcode,” Kame says. “To the lockbox by the door of my house. For emergencies.”

“Emergencies,” Jin repeats dully, and Kame swallows.

“If you want to hide somewhere no one will look,” Kame says, and grabs Jin’s hand, turning it palm up. He places the card there, and wraps Jin’s fingers around it. It crinkles in Jin’s hand. “The spare key’s in there.”

“Hide,” Jin says, and Kame licks his lips.

“Or,” Kame says tentatively, feeling flush. “Or if you need to find me.”

“Thank you,” Jin says, and stares down at the card in his hands, almost crushed in his fist.

 

*

 

Rehearsal dinners, Kame thinks, are usually Kame’s least favorite part of the wedding experience. For one, everyone that Kame knows always peppers him with the same generic questions about his work and invasive questions about his personal life. “What’s coming up for you, movie-wise?” or “When are _you_ going to get hitched, Kamenashi?” and it’s not that Kame isn’t used to those questions, it’s just that he prefers not to deal with him in his free time. It’s part of his job to answer them on camera, and he’d rather talk about baseball scores and his niece’s academic prowess when he’s with his friends. 

The other thing is that Kame always has to sit next to a stranger. An unwed cousin, who always, inevitably, ends up secretly being a fan even though she’d sworn up and down she didn’t care much about him one way or the other when tables were being decided. Once, at Koki’s wedding, actually, Kame’d ended up next to a really nerdy guy in his fifties that liked to talk about AV actresses a lot, and Kame’s got no problem with recreational porn-watching, but he doesn’t really think of it as appropriate dinner conversation at a pre-wedding event with someone who is practically a stranger. 

Nakamaru’s has got several things going for his, for though, that make it more bearable. One of those things is the food—Massu had personally arranged the catering, and Massu is a connoisseur of eating, in a way that puts even Yamapi to shame. So there’s all sorts of interesting things, and the part of Kame that’s kind of a hipster snob loves all the foreign foods he’s never heard of before, with rich, full sounding names. He loves all the rare cheeses, and he loves all the gentle smells competing with each other in the air. Meisa presides over them all like a dominatrix goddess, Nakamaru at her heels, inviting them to taste things, and Kame doesn’t feel guilty at all when he smothers a croissant in a blessedly tomato-free crème dip that’s sprinkled with herbs Kame’s never seen.

The other thing is Jin, who follows him around, making squinty faces at some of the bizarre things Kame puts on his plate, and waits until Kame takes a bite before he ventures to try things. When Kame makes blissful faces, he hurries to try it, and Kame is saving up his street cred: Maybe later he’ll taste something gross and make that face just to see if Jin will choke when he tries it. With Jin here, Kame’s a hundred times more entertained. He’d never had Jin with him for a rehearsal dinner before, because by the time they were old enough to have friends getting married, Jin was always off in America, flying in two hours before the ceremony and wearily exchanging greetings with party guests before disappearing to another engagement or meeting or recording session. Jin wouldn’t touch Kame in public, anyway, because there were always people who weren’t his friends there, people he didn’t want casting a speculative eye over him if he were to lean tiredly against Kame’s shoulder and rest 

But Jin, now, dressed too casually in trousers that hang off his hips and a fitted button down with the sleeves rolled up, is so alive. Kame thinks the last time he’s seen Jin like this, so open, was before Jin realized there was more to being an idol than singing and dancing. That people were watching his every move, waiting for him to fuck up. 

Kame doesn’t want to trust that. Doesn’t want to hope that this is Jin now, because then Kame will start hoping Jin won’t go away, and that would be foolish of Kame to do. Kame’s been fine, up till now, and he’ll be fine after Jin leaves, too. 

Jin bumps Kame’s shoulder, and Kame realizes he’s spaced out. “Sorry,” he says sheepishly, “I got lost in my thoughts.”

“I know what that’s like,” Jin says. “I’m going outside for a smoke.”

“Yeah, of course,” Kame says, and he’s left standing next to the desserts, one hand on his hip. Nakamaru slides into the space next to him, startling Kame and making him jump. 

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” Nakamaru says, and Kame offers him a grin. 

“Just surprised,” Kame says, and Nakamaru nods slowly.

“Yeah,” Nakamaru says. “Might be hard to notice other people when you can’t take your eyes off Jin.”

“I still can’t believe he’s here,” Kame says, not bothering to deny that he’s staring at Jin, whose silhouette is crisp through the glass doors leading out to the veranda. Jin looks natural and easy, pale trousers against green, green glass in the remains of the early evening light. 

Being free suits Jin, Kame thinks. 

“You don’t have to listen to me,” Nakamaru says. “Goodness knows you do well enough for yourself, Kame, and you’re happy.” Nakamaru scratches at his neck, then slides his hands into the pockets of his dress slacks. “But hey, seeing you tonight, like this? You’re glowing.”

“Glowing?” Kame asks, and Kame things about the sun.

Kame joins Jin outside. The grass is a little wet, Kame thinks, and Jin’s shirt is a little damp. Jin’s not smoking, either, and his hair is wavier than usual. “It was drizzling,” Jin explains. “But it felt nice.”

Kame chuckles. “You’re insane, Akanishi,” Kame says, and Jin turns warm eyes to Kame. Kame feels flush at the look. “You’ll get sick. You always get sick.”

“You worried about me, Kame?” Jin asks, and Kame swallows. His suit jacket feels tight across his shoulders. It didn’t when he put it on this afternoon, but maybe Kame just hadn’t been paying attention, not with the way Jin had been laughing as Kame tried to force him to put on a tie. 

“I’ve been worried about you for as long as I can remember. That’s what people do, when they care.” Kame slips the jacket off. “And I care about you a lot.”

“Kame,” Jin says, and he reaches out and links their pinkies together. Kame remembers when they’d had matching rings, but it’s a flicker of a memory, the heat of Jin’s skin, that tiny press of Jin’s finger against his own, anchors him here, in the present. “I-“

“Don’t say anything,” Kame says, and there’s a hint of pleading in his voice that makes him feel more vulnerable, and Kame doesn’t like it. He takes a deep breath. “You’re just going to leave again, right? So this week…this has to be enough.”

“Okay,” Jin says, and lets his finger slip from Kame’s. “I won’t say anything, then.” Then Jin is leaning closer, and Kame doesn’t remember the evening being this warm. Jin presses his hand flat on Kame’s chest, right in the middle of his sternum. “But Kame, seven years is a long time to think about what’s important.” Jin smiles, and looks down at the grass. “And I’ve been thinking a lot.”

 

*

 

Jin shows up unannounced like he always does, and Kame’s wearing his pajamas already. Jin’s eyes are tired, and the skin underneath is plum. “Jin?”

“Yo,” Jin says, and pushes Kame out of the way, leaving yellow sneakers in the doorway and dropping down onto Kame’s sofa like it’s his house.

Jin’s hair is under a cap. Kame wonders if Jin’s bothered to comb it. “What’s wrong?” Kame asks, and Jin looks at him, long and quiet, and Kame can see the shadows in his eyes. 

“Can we go for a walk?” Jin asks, and there’s something beseeching in his voice that Kame can’t ignore.

“Let me get dressed,” Kame says, and Jin follows him into the apartment. Jin doesn’t take off his shoes, and normally it would bother Kame, but Jin looks like only threads are holding him together, and Kame can always sweep tomorrow. 

Kame hurriedly throws on a sweater and jeans, unrolling a clean pair of socks and pulling them on. He runs a quick brush through his hair, but it doesn’t really matter.

Jin’s still standing in the same place when Kame reemerges from his room, wrapping a heavy knit scarf around his neck. “Have a good day?” Kame asks, but really, Kame should be asking ‘Had a good month?’ because that’s how long it’s been since they’ve talked. Jin’s been busy. His movie promotions in Japan seem to suck up all his time.

Kame’s been watching Jin on TV, and he’s been wondering how Jin’s been holding up.

Jin’s hands are shaking a bit, Kame notices, and Jin’s lip is slick like he’s been worrying at it for hours. “No,” Jin says. “I had two television interviews today.”

“Not radio shows?” Kame asks lightly, because it’s better, usually, if Kame can make it a joke between them, but Jin doesn’t laugh.

“Not radio shows,” Jin says. “Can we walk now?”

Kame nods, and pulls on his coat.

Outside it’s cold, and snowy. Kame’s nose is nearly frozen in the chill, and Jin’s not wearing a scarf, so Kame frets that Jin will get sick. Jin is noiseless, though, and Kame doesn’t want to break the tableau with nagging worries when Jin’s clearly got something heavier on his mind. 

They wind up all the way at the park a couple of blocks from Kame’s flat before Jin screws up the energy to speak. “None of this is what I though it would be when I was fourteen,” Jin says. 

“Of course it isn’t,” Kame says with a short laugh. “Nothing ever is.”

“I still love to sing,” Jin says. “That hasn’t changed.” Jin shivers at a gust of wind. Kame wants to give Jin his scarf, but Kame also knows Jin will refuse it. “I still…” Jin looks at Kame. Kame can feel the blazing intensity of Jin, even now, standing a meter away from each other in the dark. 

“You still…” Kame starts, but a part of him knows the words, even if Jin can’t say them. Kame will always remember the way the wood dug into his back as Jin devoured his mouth, a moment of caution thrown to the wind and desires they can’t act on surging forward. 

“Kame,” Jin says, and his voice is like a breeze, tickling Kame’s ears. Kame’s always liked the sound of Jin’s voice, the way his words tumble out at an uneven pace like river water tumbling over rocks. “I’m so tired.”

“Why does it feel like we’re saying goodbye again?” Kame asks, and Jin stills, releasing a soft, stuttering breath that Kame can feel in his bones. “Why are you always saying goodbye?”

“Kame, I can’t do this anymore.”

“Do what?” Kame asks. “Do _what_?”

“This!” Jin says, and it’s too loud. Kame likes it. It’s so much better than the silence. “All of it.” His breath is shuddering. “Isn’t it obvious I’m not cut out for this?” Jin laughs at himself, hopelessly. “I can’t even record a video by myself anymore. I can’t even pretend I’m not shaking in the interviews. Some _idol._ ”

“Jin…”

“Johnny’s said… If I want, I can. I can go.” Jin’s trembling, like there’s a heavy weight atop him and he can’t bear the strain. “Wherever I want. He’ll let me go. I… I’m giving this up, Kame.”

“What about…” 

It’ll be okay. Kame’s done it before. Lived without Jin. He’s done it for almost as many years as he’s lived _with_ Jin. That time, the time where he’s waiting and aching and trying to be practical about it all… that time seems to pass slower.

“I’m a square, Kame,” Jin says and Kame hears him through a fog. “I’m a square and all the holes are these tiny triangles. I don’t fit.”

“Jin, you…”

“There are more bad days than good days, Kame.” Jin’s voice is pleading, and Kame knows what that means. Kame knows about Jin’s sitting-in-the-dark days. About the days when you can talk to Jin and he doesn’t hear you. The days when you look into Jin’s eyes and all you can see are shadows and an echoing emptiness. “I need to leave. I need to…”

“Oh,” Kame says, and he knows it’s selfish, and impossible, but he wants Jin to stay here. He wants to know if anything can become of the things that lie unsaid between them.

Kame’s life is a sand-filled hourglass, and Jin comes back and it flips, and Jin leaves, and Kame just watches the pile of sand build up slowly, falling grain by grain.

“Come with me,” Jin says, curling his fingers desperately around Kame’s wrist. Jin’s hands seem smaller than his own. “Just…come with me.”

Kame’s throat is dry. “I can’t.”

Jin’s fingers tighten. It hurts. “Why not?” Jin exhales, and in the cold winter evening his breath looks like cigarette smoke. 

Kame thinks about his brothers, his niece and nephew, about KAT-TUN, about the drama he just signed on to do. “I haven’t done everything I wanted to do yet. I can’t just give up my life.”

Jin’s fingers retreat, and Kame misses them in an instant. Misses Jin, all over again. “I know,” Jin says. “I mean, I knew that.” Jin’s voice sounds choked, and Kame can’t make out his face in the dark, but he knows Jin; he knows Jin is biting his lower lip, eyes looking down at the snow beneath their feet. “I just thought…this time…” Jin’s hands bury themselves in his pockets, his long wool coat stark against the white covered ground. He looks like a demon, Kame thinks, here to steal Kame’s soul. Kame gave that to him years ago. There’s really nothing left for Jin to take that Kame hasn’t already given him. “I just thought this time I’d ask.”

“Okay,” Kame says, and the word is like a gunshot in the night air. ‘Okay, you can leave.’ ‘Okay, I’m glad you asked.’ ‘Okay, but every moment we’re apart I can feel myself breaking inside a little more.’ ‘Okay, and I love you.’

It’s all of those things, and none of those things too. It’s just ‘okay’, Kame guesses, because there’s nothing else to say.

Jin’s decisions have always been resolute.

When Jin leans forward, he seems almost shy, almost hesitant, in a way he hasn’t since that time, the one they never talk about but Kame thinks about all the time, in Kame’s flat, when Kame could feel Jin shaking out of his skin as he pressed Kame against the cool wall, hands quivering on Kame’s shoulders. It’s like that; like Jin is afraid Kame will say no, like Kame will push him away. Only now, Jin’s hands feel heavy on his shoulders, and Jin’s mouth tastes like nicotine and coffee. Only now, Jin isn’t kissing him hello, Jin is kissing him goodbye.

Jin’s mouth is hot, burning away winter’s chill like it never existed, and Kame doesn’t try to get closer, or try to pull away. He just tilts his head to the right, giving Jin more room to slip his tongue between Kame’s lips, and to explore Kame’s mouth with the same fierce enthusiasm he brings to everything else. He remaps with gentle licks, and Kame thinks this is _finally_ it, that this is finally the answer. It’s the answer, and it’s probably also the last time. It only makes him want to kiss Jin back harder, to memorize the texture of the inside of his cheeks and the way the back of his teeth feel against the tip of his tongue.

Jin pulls back first, resting his forehead to Kame’s, letting his breath blow warm against Kame’s lips as Kame struggles to catch his breath. Kame lets his eyes fall closed, then, and relishes the feel of Jin’s chest pressed against his own, relishes how _this_ , this feels good. Has always felt right, even when both of them know it can’t be—not when Jin is half a step from breaking and Kame doesn’t know how to put him back together. “Thank you,” Jin whispers, and this is another moment they won’t talk about, and then he’s gone.

The snow seems so cold now. Or maybe Kame is just freezing inside.

He reaches into his pocket with trembling hands and pulls out the pack of cigarettes that’ve lasted him the whole winter. He grabs the lighter from his pocket too, lighting the end and taking a deep inhale. 

They’re Jin’s brand of cigarettes… Mild Sevens with the extra long filter, the kind that girls smoke because they look more elegant against dark pink lip-gloss. 

Kame’s lips tingle.

The snow is sparkling in the street-lamp, like diamond dust. Memories scatter in the wind as ash falls from the lit cigarette. Kame holds a lungful of smoke, and when he lets it go, it’s like he’s letting go.

But not letting go of Jin. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to let go of Jin. Not just because he loves Jin, but because, despite everything, he knows Jin loves him back.

 

*

 

Kita’s smile turns into a slack-jawed expression of disbelief when six people walk into the interview session instead of five. “Akanishi?” Kita asks, and his voice squeaks on the last syllable, and Kame wants to laugh.

“In the flesh,” Koki says, and he slaps Kita on the shoulder. “Now, be nice. No invasive questions. He’s here to sing pretty and make my hair look better.”

Kame laughs, and Ueda smirks. “Sorry, Koki, Jin combed his today.”

“Kame made me,” Jin says, shifting nervously, arms hugging himself. Nakamaru leans closer to him in comfort. Kame’s trained himself not to do that in public, and even if it’s been years since they made an appearance as six, it’s easy to fall back into the old dynamics. 

Like riding a bike.

Kita clears his throat. “Well, shall we record?” He says, and Junno is bouncing around, adjusting mics and rooting around for another chair. He crows triumphantly when he finds one.

“You can share my mic,” Kame says, and Jin grins at him slow and shy. 

“Yeah,” Jin says. “Sure.”

Kita looks like he’s going to pass out, and Kame grins at him winningly, and then he’s blushing and Ueda is endlessly amused and Koki is slipping an arm over Kame’s shoulder and making kissy faces, talking about how jealous he is when Kame flirts with other men. Kame’s not really paying attention to that, because Jin’s talking quietly to Nakamaru, and out of the corner of his eye, he watches the tension slough from Jin’s shoulders.

It’s always been easier for Jin with friends. 

Jin’s thigh presses into his own as the opening notes to _Harukana Yakusoku_ start to play, and Kame doesn’t know how to explain this feeling that’s surging inside of him so hot and melting. It’s not nostalgia, or hope, or something explainable like that. He doesn’t have to look at Jin to know Jin is looking at him, or to know that Jin feels it too- he can feel it in the way Jin’s leg is shaking, and in the way Jin’s shoulder keeps pushing against his own as he harmonizes, using Kame as his anchor. This, it’s a bond, one that time or distance can never break.

Eyes meet, and Kame knows now with absolute certainty that he’ll never be able to forget.

 

*

 

_Again and again, however we know the landscape of love_  
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,  
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others  
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together  
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again  
among the flowers, face to face with the sky. 

-Again and Again, Rainer Maria Rilke

 

*

 

“Am I stupid?” Kame asks miserably, taking a gulp of coffee from his mug and sort of wishing it was wine. “I feel really, really stupid.”

“No,” Uchi says. “But you know, taking out your doorbell only works if the person you don’t want to bother you doesn’t know where you keep the spare key.”

*

 

Jin’s had the key to Kame’s heart for more than twenty years, and Kame’s tried and tried but he’s never managed to change the lock. 

 

*

 

Jin calls him at two in the morning. It’s okay, because Kame is awake.

“Kame,” Jin says. “Kame, I still…”

“I just finished filming a movie,” Kame replies. “And maybe in a few months, I’ll start another one. I pick the roles I like, now.”

“That’s good,” Jin says.

“Are you happier now? Without cameras and fans and all of that?”

“Most of the time,” Jin replies. “But there are things I miss.”

“We all make choices,” Kame says. 

“Are you happy?” Jin asks, and Jin’s got one of those pay as you go mobiles that has crappy reception, so his voice is crackling. At least, Kame thinks it’s the reception.

“Most of the time,” Kame says, and he thinks about the way the pushpins dig into the pad of his thumb as he’s pressing them into the wall, and the red mark the tacks leave behind that slowly fades away to nothing.

 

*

 

Kame’s mostly afraid that after the wedding, Jin will disappear again, and all he’ll have is a map on the wall, with a pushpin in Japan, and sixteen postcards, and a memory of Jin, with a fading bruise on his left eye, smiling at him softly from under his bangs and singing high and clear in a harmony long unsung.

 

* 

 

Kame’s got moles and freckles. Sometimes he looks at them in the morning, after he takes his shower, when he’s deciding if he’s going to wear make-up or not, skin freshly scrubbed, a little dry on the bridge of his nose and his cheekbones.

If he’s got an interview or a variety show, someone else will do his make-up. But if it’s just Kame, and there’s nothing on the agenda except walking his dog, he contemplates it, tracing along the curves of his face and wondering how he feels like looking today.

Kame likes his freckles. He likes the three next to his mouth the most, dark and uneven and not beauty marks at all, just imperfections along the smooth, soft skin of his face. Kame’s not insecure about his appearance, but sometimes he likes the reminder that he’s just a person, with flaws just like anyone else. That maybe the impossible standards he holds himself to can take a break on Thursday as long as he’s back to work on Friday, giving one-hundred and ten percent. 

Kame recalls fingers that trailed along them, a thumb that smoothed a line, connecting all the dots like it’s making a map of the universe, tracing the pattern of the big dipper into Kame’s skin.

“They’re one part of what makes you special,” was whispered into his hair, and Kame can feel it, mint-scented breath ghosting across his scalp.

“What’s the other part?” Kame asked, and he moved closer. The t-shirts smelled fresh, like detergent and like the faintest hint of a natural scent.

“Everything else,” and there was a giggle, and Kame had felt warm and content.

But that was years and years ago, and it’s so distant now that Kame doesn’t know why he bothers to remember it.

Still, Kame has freckles. He likes them. 

Sometimes he secretly hoped the map drawn across his cheek and chin would give direction to that lost man. Guide him home. But Kame’s waited a long time, and the freckles have gotten darker, and some of them, Kame thinks, ended up actually being moles, and Kame is still waiting.

Kame thinks love is like the sun, and these are some of the marks it leaves as Kame revolves around it, like kisses and a promise.

 

*

 

Jin’s suit is cream-colored, and Kame is surprised at his immaculate choice. He doesn’t look uncomfortable, either, just elegant. Light streams in through the wide-set windows of the reception hall, and June sun makes the marble floors glow, and casts Jin in glittering outline. He stands with his hands behind his back, left wrist in right hand, eyes on Ryo, who’s headed, Kame thinks, toward the restroom. 

“Who picked out your suit?” Kame asks, and Jin spins to face him, caught off guard. 

“Rina-chan,” Jin laughs. “Yamapi picked his own, but I apparently wasn’t to be trusted.” Kame can tell Yamapi chose his own suit. He’s seen him earlier, and the man’s wearing a pink organza scarf instead of a tie. 

“You look nice,” Kame says, and Jin hesitantly tucks his hair behind his ear. He’s shaved away the hairs on his chin, but there’s still his faint mustache on his upper lip.

“Not as nice as you,” Jin says.

“Matter of opinion,” Kame says, and Jin’s tie is a little crooked, and it feels normal to reach forward and straighten it. Jin freezes, and then relaxes into the touch. His hands come around front to soothe Kame’s lapels.

“What if I want to be selfish, now?” Jin asks, and Kame lets his hands fall to his sides. He can’t do this now. 

“I have to go,” Kame says. “I’m in the wedding party.”

“Of course you are,” Jin says, eyes sliding right. Ryo’s coming back. “I… Never mind.” Jin’s mouth is set in a determined line that makes Kame feel like hiding. 

Kame slips in next to Massu, and Nakamaru leans around him to frown at Kame. “Why do you look all nervous?” he asks, and Kame straightens his shoulders.

“I’m not nervous,” Kame says. “After all, I’m not the one marrying Kuroki Meisa.”

“Oh shit,” Nakamaru says, and his eyes get all round, and the color drains from his face. “I’m getting married!”

“Nice one,” Ueda hisses from behind him, and Kame smiles at Nakamaru encouragingly. 

“You’ll be fine,” Kame says, and Nakamaru exhales. “Just follow Meisa’s lead.”

“I’ve been doing that for years,” Nakamaru says. “I _will_ be fine.”

Koki makes a whip-cracking sound, and Junno giggles obnoxiously, and Massu is nudging Nakamaru with his elbow and making secretive motions with his eyebrows that are probably part of their best-friend code.

Kame thinks, as he finds Jin in the audience, that it must be so nice to know that letting yourself be in love is the best decision you can make. 

 

*

 

Kame’s circling so fast he’s afraid he’ll spin out of orbit. A part of him hopes he does, just because staying in orbit, just the way he is now, is not longer good enough.

 

*

 

_March days return with their covert light,_  
and huge fish swim through the sky,  
vague earthly vapours progress in secret,  
things slip to silence one by one.  
Through fortuity, at this crisis of errant skies,  
you reunite the lives of the sea to that of fire,  
grey lurchings of the ship of winter  
to the form that love carved in the guitar.  
O love, O rose soaked by mermaids and spume,  
dancing flame that climbs the invisible stairway,  
to waken the blood in insomnia’s labyrinth,  
so that the waves can complete themselves in the sky,  
the sea forget its cargoes and rages,  
and the world fall into darkness’s nets. 

\--March days return with their covert light, Pablo Neruda

 

*

Kame knows he’s being a coward. He knows, when he looked from the dais out into the audience and caught eyes with Jin, that for one brief moment, he felt so full of hope he could burst into a billion pieces and scatter across the universe. He wanted to give in. He wanted to beg Jin not to go, not to leave Kame feeling like this all over again.

He’s not quite sure why he’s running away from that realization. Kame doesn’t usually have it in him to lie to himself. He usually only forces his feelings to sometimes take second place to practicalities. Except now, somehow, Kame is afraid of feeling like this, afraid of the way, despite everything, Jin will always pull him back.

Kame’s apartment feels empty. He wonders how the reception is going—if Nakamaru has noticed one of his groomsmen has gone MIA or if he’s too wrapped up in Meisa’s smile to notice.

When he closes the door behind him, he can’t help but lean against it, back against the cool surface for support. His thoughts are racing, and his hands are shaking, too. Jin, smiling shyly across from his seat, looking at Kame. Looking only at Kame, like Kame isn’t one of hundreds of people in the room. Like Kame’s special.

It’s kind of, Kame thinks, how Kame looks at Jin. Like no matter how many people there are, it’s always going to be him and Jin. No matter the distance. No matter how long they’re apart. It’s always, _always_ going to be Kame and Jin, and words they can’t say, and words they don’t have to say.

And that, Kame thinks, is almost too terrifying to contemplate. It makes Kame feel like giving in.

There’s a noise, a faint one, that Kame should recognize but he’s too numb to think.

Suddenly Kame is stumbling forward as his own front door opens behind him. He spins around, not sure what to expect, and damnit, Kame knows better than to not lock his door. 

“Didn’t I lock that?” Kame says dumbly, and Jin inhales quickly, and a little hysterically. 

Kame finds his balance, and almost loses it again when it sinks in that Jin has followed him home. 

“Your key,” Jin says. “I know where you keep the spare.”

“Right,” Kame says. He’s not ready. He’s afraid. And against all odds, he wants to…

“Hi,” Jin says, and Kame just stares at him; stares at him long and hard.

Jin’s skin is tan, so tan, against the sky blue of Jin’s dress shirt and the cream of his jacket, and his lips are dry and cracked from worrying at them with his teeth. Looking at him this close, Kame notices that Jin’s eyebrows are still too thick, and his hair is too long, and now it’s tied in a sloppy ponytail that sits at the base of his neck, the fluffy ends still untamed, lying dark and heavy across his shoulders where it’s fallen from the band. Kame’s not sure why he had even thought time would have made anything about Jin’s hair less wild, but it hasn’t. 

Jin is still Jin, seven years and sixteen postcards and two fractured hearts later.

Jin is still everything, and Kame aches with wanting.

“Hi,” Kame says back, and Jin laughs; he laughs incredulously, and it sounds too raw in Kame’s ears. “Long time no see.” 

Kame’s been watching Jin this week with a careful, hesitating gaze; shying away from looking too deep, because he’s been wary of what he’d find. But now it’s like his eyes are open, and for the first time he’s not just looking, he’s _seeing_.

_Hisashiburi_ , Kame has said, because he finally accepts that Jin is really here. Jin won’t melt away beneath his fingers if Kame reaches out to touch. 

Kame is starting to believe in gravity all over again. 

“Yeah,” Jin says, and he’s transparent and open and Kame can see everything. Jin, this week, has been offering and offering and Kame’s been scared to know. Kame hasn’t wanted to see the same things in Jin’s eyes that he’s been keeping buried inside of him for so long he’s almost forgotten how to let himself feel them. There’s nothing quiet about Jin, and Kame thinks Jin’s the most beautiful he’s ever been, right now, loose-limbed and smiling nervously as Kame steps closer. “It really has been a long time.” Jin understands. 

Maybe now Jin and Kame are finally circling at compatible speeds, subject to the same forces of the universe, and moving together.

Jin smells like mint, and like the sun. Jin smells like love, and Kame can feel himself burning and he moves closer still. “You’re an asshole,” Kame says. “Seven _years_. Fucking _postcards,_ Akanishi! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I’ve been waiting all week for you to say that,” Jin replies. Jin reaches out, and grabs a handful of Kame’s shirt and pulls him into an embrace. Kame’s cheek is mashed to Jin’s chest, and he can hear the steady thud of it in his ear. He can feel it under his fingers. “I know,” Jin says. “I missed you.” And he’s said it before, but now Kame can feel it, spinning through him like a tornado and ripping his flesh from his bones. It’s okay, because Jin’s arms are holding him together. Jin’s arms are building him anew.

It finally feels like Jin is ready. And Kame…

“I missed you too,” Kame mumbles, and Kame’s lips stick to the soft silk of Jin’s dress shirt, and Jin’s hands are holding him so tight that Kame is sure Jin is trying to pull Kame inside of him. 

Kame doesn’t want to move away, can’t move away, because the pull of Jin’s gravity is too strong.

“God, I missed you,” Jin whispers again, and he lets his arms fall, and Kame moves back a little, so he can look up at Jin. His hand finds its way to Jin’s jaw and runs fingers along the smooth line of Jin’s jaw—smooth like it only ever is when Jin’s just shaved.

“Are you happy now?” Kame asks, and Jin sighs, letting his eyes fall closed. A bit of sunlight peeks through the window, and it’s like Jin is glowing, bright and hot under its brilliance. 

Kame’s heart is calling out, and it’s like Jin’s hears it. “There are more good days than bad ones, now,” Jin says, and it’s barely voiced, but it rings loud and clear in Kame’s head.

“That’s… all any of us have, really,” Kame says, and Jin’s hands reach up to trace Kame’s eyebrows, following the shape of them with his thumb.

There are some things that are the same, Kame thinks, as the other times he and Jin have come together this close, sharing air and hopes and aimless touches. 

There are also some things that are different. There are new lines around Jin’s eyes—laugh lines. They suit him. Kame doesn’t want to look away because pictures have never done Jin justice. Kame wants to memorize the way Jin’s upper lip pulls when he smiles, and the way his jaw juts out and the way his eyes widen just a little, sparkling with life. 

“I’m really happy right now,” Jin says. “Because you’re still the same.”

“Not really,” Kame says.

“Exactly the same,” Jin says. “I mean, your hair is different, and your shoulders are even broader, and--”

“So not the same at all, then?” Kame asks dryly, and Jin stubbornly puffs out his cheeks. 

“Your smile’s the same,” Jin says, and Jin presses his palm flat on Kame’s chest. “Your heart is the same.”

“Is it?” Kame says, and his mouth is stretching into a wide grin. It pulls at his cheeks, and feels unfamiliar. Kame’s always had a special smile just for Jin, and the muscles have gone unused for so long that Kame’s forgotten what it feels like.

He’s remembering now, though, and this time, Kame won’t push those memories, or those feelings, away.

Kame’s heart isn’t the same. Kame thinks it’s a little bit stronger.

“Yeah,” Jin says, and he lifts his hands up, and around, and buries them in Kame’s hair. “Kame I…” Jin clears his throat. “Sorry. I’m so sorry.” Jin’s nose brushes Kame’s and it’s the smallest point of contact, but Kame’s centered there, and he and Jin are finally orbiting around the sun in the same direction. “I’ve been fucking everything up for years and years, and I got really fucking lost. But I needed…”

“Okay,” Kame says, and he doesn’t mean Jin leaving was okay. He doesn’t mean that seven years where he waited for two postcards a year, for forty-eight words total, for fifteen pictures that told him nothing except that Jin was still _alive_ , was still maybe, possibly, thinking of Kame, were _okay._ Jin knows that. Jin also knows, Kame thinks, that Kame is going to forgive him eventually, because Kame doesn’t know how to not forgive Jin. Kame doesn’t know how to let Jin go. “It’s going to be okay.”

Kame doesn’t _want_ to let Jin go, because he and Jin have always been connected, faint signals across an endless universe. Satellite hearts.

Jin breathes out, and Kame can feel Jin’s warm breath on his lips. “Kame, I…” Jin’s eyes are looking straight into Kame’s, and Jin’s tripping over his Japanese, because Jin’s so bad at talking when he’s scared he’ll say the wrong thing. “I want to…”

“Jin,” Kame murmurs, and now their lips are touching, Jin’s chapped lips catching on Kame’s smooth ones. “I already know.”

And then Kame kisses Jin, and it’s only the third time one of them has mustered up the courage in twenty years, but Kame’s certain it’s not the last, because this time, Kame thinks, he’s not going to let Jin slip away. Jin’s mouth is slick, and Kame tilts his head for more access. Their lips move surely against each other with an even, soothing pressure that drives Kame insane. Jin’s hands are gently cradling Kame’s skull, and it’s not enough; not right now, when Kame’s got this strange desperation bubbling up inside him, sending him hurtling through the atmosphere towards every part of Jin he can touch. Kame’s hands slide down to Jin’s neck and tug him closer, and Jin’s surprised; he gasps, and Kame takes advantage, sweeping his tongue into Jin’s mouth, and Jin’s mustache scratches against his face and normally Kame would hate that, but right now it doesn’t matter, because this is Jin.

Then Jin’s hands pull tighter, and Jin’s eyelashes flutter against Kame’s cheek, and Jin tastes like mint and like childhood and like adulthood, too, and Kame knows, _knows_ , that it’s still going to be hard, that Jin’s still going to have days he won’t want to get out of bed and Kame’s still not going to understand. That there will be days when Jin is on the other side of the stars and Kame will have regrets. That there will be days where Kame doesn’t understand just how things ended up like this.

It seems worth it, in the end. Kame’s happy without Jin; he’s got a great life, a great family, and great friends. But like this, Jin close enough to touch, close enough to feel, his warm laughter tickling Kame’s cheeks and his pretty, pretty fingers skating Kame’s sides… It’s like stepping out into the sun after a long winter, like Kame is waking up with the flowers and blooming right here and right now. 

Jin pulls Kame’s lower lip into his mouth and sucks, and Kame pulls on that ponytail, and Jin makes a mewling sound that sinks down into Kame, convincing him that this is real. “Jin,” Kame manages between soft kisses against Jin’s red and swollen lips. “Jin, _I missed you._ ” It’s a confession, or as close as Kame will get to admitting that Jin, warm and smiling, fills in the little cracks in his insides that Kame had resigned himself to living with, and each and every motion is coming easier and easier.

“I missed you too,” Jin says, and he can say it a hundred times and Kame will never get tired of hearing it. Get tired of hearing Jin’s voice.

Seven years is a long time to wonder. Seven years is a long time to hold your breath.

Kame is exhaling now, though, and Jin is stepping back and letting Kame go, and it feels like every other time they’ve kissed, and Kame wonders if Jin is going to try to retreat, just like he’s stepped back from this electricity between them every other time. Just like he’s disappeared every time Kame’s opened up his chest and exposed his heart for Jin to take.

But Jin just frees his fingers from Kame’s hair and laces their hands together, so they’re standing palm to palm in Kame’s living room, hardwood floor cool beneath their feet. “So stay with me,” Kame says, and he’s never asked before but he’s asking now. Asking for more than fleeting glances and locked up hearts and postcards from around the world. “Even if you don’t want to, stay.”

Kame is asking for goodnight kisses and good-morning smiles, and for the heat of Jin’s palms, just like this.

Kame’s tired of being a satellite, and he wants them both to fall straight into the sun. 

“I can’t,” Jin says, but his fingers clench tighter, like he’ll never let go. Kame hopes he doesn’t. It’s been twenty-four years and six months and thirteen days, and Jin has come and gone and come again, and Kame’s been waiting for him a very long time. Kame’s been missing him a long time. “You know I can’t.”

Kame thinks about Jin, lying in the dark under the covers. Kame remembers the shadows in Jin’s eyes and the shake of his shoulders under the lens of the camera. Kame’s life is not for Jin. Maybe it never has been. “I know that,” Kame says. “I just figured this time… this time I’d ask.”

Jin smiles, because it’s a conversation they’ve had before in reverse. It’s words Kame has said to Jin, and words Jin has said to Kame, but never with this much hope.

“Come with me,” Jin says. “Just… come with me.” Jin squeezes again. “I could be enough for you.” Jin’s fingers are callused. “We could be enough for each other.”

Kame thinks about his brothers, his niece and nephews, about KAT-TUN, about the movie he’s just finished, with promotions around the corner. He thinks about the map on his living room wall. He thinks about the way Jin’s fingers feel, fitting between his own like they were made to be there. “Alright,” Kame says, because, Kame thinks, it might be nice to be impractical, just this once, when it really matters.

And he’s staring at Jin, who is looking at Kame like he can’t believe Kame’s said yes, and then Jin is kissing him again, fiercely, hands running up and down Kame’s sides, pushing Kame’s jacket from his shoulders as Kame does the same to Jin. And then Kame has grabbed fistfuls of Jin’s hair, which has come loose and falls into Jin’s face and tickles at Kame’s neck as Jin angles closer. 

Then Kame’s yelping, because Jin’s pushed him backwards, and they land sprawling on Kame’s couch, and Jin doesn’t let up, he just keeps taking Kame’s mouth over and over again. Kame doesn’t mind- he’s giving it as good as he’s getting, trailing fearless hands across Jin’s exposed collarbones, because Jin had lost his tie probably long before coming to Kame’s door, and his exploration is making Jin squeak into his mouth. Kame swallows the sound even as he chuckles, and Jin takes revenge by tickling along Kame’s ribs playfully, and Kame squirms beneath him, and Jin lifts his lips and laughs, and it’s beautiful, beautiful like all of Jin. 

Kame’s back is pressed awkwardly against the arm of the sofa, and Jin’s hair is hanging like a curtain over them both, long and wild, and Kame feel like he wants to laugh forever, to stay in this moment forever. But time moves forward, and Jin kisses him again and again and again.

It’s the fourth kiss, now, if this even qualifies as one kiss. Soon Kame won’t be able to count it on one hand. He’s looking forward to that. The universe is aflame.

“There are more than seven billion people in the world,” Kame whispers, “and for some crazy reason, I only want you.”

Jin’s smile, Kame thinks, is a yellow dwarf star all on its own.

“You want to go to Rome?” Jin asks. “I’ve been meaning to go to Rome.”

“That’s one hell of a first date, Akanishi,” Kame says, and Jin presses his face into the hollow of Kame’s throat, and he’s _heavy_ , but Kame likes it, like how Jin feels so present. Jin’s finally here again, and Kame, unbelievably, gets to keep him. “But yes. Rome. Let’s go.” Kame starts thinking about booking flights, and what he’s going to do with his apartment, and what he’s going to tell his parents, because Kame doesn’t know what to do without plans.

“First of all,” Jin says, and he’s brushing dark strands out of Kame’s eyes, and his fingertips make Kame feel like the sun is getting closer and closer, because Kame’s skin’s on fire. “Stop _scheduling_. We’ll work it out later. Like tomorrow or something.”

“Okay,” Kame says, and Jin presses a sloppy kiss to his nose, and Kame feels fourteen, like the future is limitless and it’s all unfolding here in Jin’s eyes. “But I’m warning you, Jin. I _like_ schedules.”

“I’ve known you almost my whole life,” Jin says. “You don’t have to warn me.”

“Mmm,” Kame says, and he pushes Jin’s hair out of his face.

“Second of all,” Jin says, and Kame blinks slowly as Jin’s lips leave tiny kisses along Kame’s jaw and neck, the kind that tingle and make Kame want to drag Jin’s face back to his own. “Rome won’t be our first date.” He’s undoing the top two buttons of Kame’s shirt as he speaks, exposing a little more skin to the air.

“No?” Kame asks, languidly running his hands up and down Jin’s arms, reveling in the sensation of silk blend sliding under his palms. He also likes the way Jin trembles at his touch. 

“Of course not, Kame,” Jin says, and he says the words into the uncovered skin at Kame’s shoulder, where the neck of his shirt is now wide and askew. “Everything before this…” Jin nuzzles his nose into the hollow of Kame’s throat, and Kame loves the way they’re spinning together. “That was just a very, very long first date.”

“Really?” Kame says. “It’s going to be an extended courtship, then.”

“Well,” Jin says, and now his hands slip inside Kame’s shirt, running tantalizingly across the muscles of Kame’s abdomen, teasing at his navel before flatting and pushing up to his chest. “We _do_ have the rest of our lives.” Jin holds his breath then, like he expects Kame to say no. 

“You’re right,” Kame says, and Jin purrs, pleased, into Kame’s collar. And he and Jin might fight on the third date, and break up on the seventh date, but he’s sure they’ll have a tenth date, and a thirtieth date, and Jin will be seventy and Kame will still be telling him to comb his hair and do his laundry. “We do.” Kame leans upward and grabs Jin’s lips, intending to leave a peck, but Jin keeps him there, delving into Kame’s mouth until they both run short of air. Then Jin lets Kame fall back, and Kame’s dizzy with everything. 

“Is it too soon to negotiate children?” Jin asks, and Kame’s laugh tears out of him, starting from his belly and making his shoulders quake.

“Probably,” Kame says. “Ask me after I’ve had you to myself for a while.”

“We might have to steal one,” Jin says playfully. “But I guess we should go on a few more dates. Wouldn’t want to realize we, uh…didn’t really know each other.”

Kame thinks as long as there are moments as perfect as this one, everything is going to be fine. “So when do we leave?” Kame asks.

“Tomorrow? The day after?” Jin queries, more to himself than to Kame. “I should visit the Shirotas. Drop in on Reio.” Jin shakes his hair out of his face. “Get a haircut.”

“There’s still time tonight,” Kame says, looking out his window through the fall of Jin’s waves, the black locks thick, but not thick enough to block the rays of sunset. 

Jin’s eyebrows draw together, and his lips quirk mischievously. “Not really…” Jin says, and then his hands are wandering with intent again, and Kame sucks in a gasp as Jin’s thumbs stroke his hipbones slowly, like he’s memorizing the feeling of it. “I have other plans for tonight.”

“I don’t know, Jin,” Kame says, even as he shifts beneath Jin, craving more of that delicious contact. “I worry for my reputation. It’s only the first date.”

Jin smirks, and blinks at Kame lazily, and Kame’s heart is beating twice as fast as it usually does. “Kame, we’ve waited over twenty years to be right for each other,” Jin says, and his hands dip lower. “I’m sure I can change your mind.”

 

*

 

_Dear Kame-chan,_

_Documentary was a huge success! Jin’s special appearance was all over the news—you know how it goes._

_Meisa seahorsed Nakamaru…Just kidding! Meisa’s expecting. It’s only been two months, but I guess the clock is ticking, haha. Poor child, it’ll probably have Nakamaru’s nose. Meisa will make sure the kid dresses well, though, I’m sure._

_It was great getting your last mail. Glad you guys finally made it safely through Italy! How is Rome? Are you happy, Kame-chan? You seem happy. Your movie comes out next week. What with the furor over Jin and you disappearing off the face of the planet, hype is at a new high. Wondering if anyone is going to make the accusation that you and Jin have run off together… they’d be right, but no one would_ actually _believe it, right?_

_Anyway, we’ve missed you. Keep in touch! (and you to, Akanishi!!!!)_

_Your secret lover,  
Koki_

 

*

 

Kame browses the small plastic rack, looking for a picture that catches his eye. There’s around a hundred to choose from, but Kame’s picky, and he lets his gaze linger on every single one of them.

His niece would like the one of angels, Kame thinks, as he picks it up and examines it. He likes the way it looks; it says Rome to him, and he thinks it’s the sort of thing she’d get into these days, since she’d said, last time he’d called, that she was taking an art history class. 

Arms slip around his waist, and Jin’s chin digs into his shoulder as his chest presses to Kame’s back. Kame should care that they’re in public, but he doesn’t; he just lets his left hand rest atop Jin’s linked hands, Jin’s thumbs rubbing slow circles on his stomach. “I thought you weren’t a fan of the postcards,” Jin says into Kame’s ear, and Kame shivers even as he smiles. 

“I’m not a fan of _only_ postcards,” Kame says. “I’ll be sending detailed emails and calling, too.” Kame makes his tone stern, so that Jin will get his implied message that Jin will be following his example. “But I gave her the map, you know? So from now on she’ll be keeping track of where my heart goes. Might as well help her out.”

“Don’t you mean where you go?” Jin asks, and Kame grins. 

“No,” Kame says. “The map follows my heart. Mostly that’s where _you go_ , Jin.”

Jin’s hands still for a moment, and there’s a tiny noise that means that Jin is blushing, and trying not to let Kame know that he’s still a giant softy. Kame doesn’t know why he bothers, since Kame is well aware that Jin’s a cheeseball, and anyway, Kame’s sort of becoming one too.

“That’s nice,” Jin says at last, and Kame leans left so that his cheek is pressed to Jin’s. “Shall we?”

“Let me pay for this,” Kame says, untangling himself from Jin and looking around. No one is paying the two Japanese men in the corner any attention. “Then we can visit Trevi Fountain.”

“Whatever you want,” Jin says, and Kame laughs. 

“What do you want?”

“I already have it,” Jin replies, and Kame… Kame is happy. Kame doesn’t have an upcoming movie role, or an interview tomorrow, or a commercial to shoot. Kame doesn’t have a dinner party to attend, or a fashion show to appear at or in. Kame loves all of those things, but they don’t compare, for now, to a sunny day in Rome, fingers laced with Jin’s under a burning Mediterranean sun. For the first time in his life, Kame’s not thinking too far ahead. He’s here, in the present. Enjoying this moment.

“You’re a sap,” Kame says, dropping change for the postcard on the counter. The teenage girl behind the counter looks up in surprise at the Japanese, and Kame smiles at her.

“I’m still trying to woo you,” Jin says. “After all, this is only our second date. What if you decide you don’t want to see me anymore?”

“As if,” Kame says, and Jin just watches him with those expressive eyes, and Jin takes Kame’s breath away, just like he did the first time he saw him, all those years ago, when Jin was still a floppy, overly expressive teenager with a loud scream and awkward knees. “You’re stuck with me, Akanishi.”

Love is like the sun. Kame and Jin spent a long time circling it at different speeds, feeling the same heat, and now they’ve locked together, satellite hearts headed for impact.

Kame doesn’t mind.

Love is like the sun, and Kame’s fears burn away to nothing under the brilliant rays of Jin’s smile.

**Author's Note:**

> For Saya, whom I adore above all, who is my cheerleader, who holds my hand excessively through everything, sends me gorgeous and distracting “inspiration pictures”, and rewards me with Jin and Bemu wallpapers when I’ve been a good girl, and is seriously one of the most awesome people I have the pleasure of knowing. <3 Seriously. This is a thank-you for all you’ve done for me in the past month especially, and it’s weird that I’m thanking you with something like this? Whatever, you’re so M. (Maia+Saya OTP) I hope this is shiny enough for you.


End file.
